ie Sees 





— ee i 


a eae 


it 
.% 
| 


a 
ee ee 


oe 


sat ; 


Division. 


ft 


im pemets 





me ys 


‘ 
MMEO? 





Digitized by the Internet Archive 
In 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https ://archive.org/details/lostprophecyfoun00vanb 


The Lost Prophecy 


Found 
In Ancient Foreshadowtngs of The Coming One 


Instruction — Reassurance— W arnin io 


Reserved for the Needs of To-day 


An Exposition by 
James Turley van Burkalow, Ph.D. 





New York Cuicaco 
Fleming H. Revell Company 


LONDON AND EDINBURGH 


Copyright, 1924, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 


Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


PREFACE 


HE sacred scriptures here unfolded are unique— 
but only in the scale on which the well-known 
mode of revelation they exemplify and the 

once favorite and still familiar literary devices they 
employ have been conceived and carried out. It is of 
the nature of every oracular utterance, of every 
apocalypse, as also of the parables of our Lord, to 
conceal for a season in order to reveal the more 
effectively in the denouement; and these scriptures 
simply register the high-water mark of the oracular in 
divine revelation. Being so preeminently enigmatic, 
they have required methods of interpretation that 
are very different from the right and proper procedure 
of ordinary exegesis; but none of them is without the 
warrant of precedent even in the Bible itself—as will 
duly appear—and so their justification here depends 
only upon the results obtained. Are they worth 
while? Do they form a consistent whole? Do they 
function harmoniously in the cycle of Messianic 
prophecy? Do their historical and doctrinal implica- 
tions correspond with the truth as already known? 
And finally, do they offer such credentials as may 
reasonably be expected of oracles so long unrecognized 
and held in reserve? 

It is pertinent also to ask whether in each case the 
exposition legitimately represents the message in- 
tended, or whether something has not been read into 
the text by the interpreter. The answer to this 
inquiry is conditioned, however, by the fact that we 
are dealing with the Word of God, and not merely with 

s 


6 PREFACE 


the truth as it was apprehended by the inspired writer. 
Divine inspiration, as has been well said, “makes a 
man a vehicle of deep-lying forces so that he builds 
better than he knows. He may think that he is 
writing for a society or even for an individual, when 
he is really writing for future ages, and to meet needs 
of which he is unconscious.”’ * 

Even so, through many cooperating and often un- 
witting human agencies, Divine Providence and the 
Spirit of Revelation have worked together to provide 
in the hid treasures here disclosed a message that 
meets the spiritual needs of this Great Day as the 
hidden stores of coal and oil have met its material 
needs, a message to the Jew first, and also to the 
Gentile. 

Israel according to the flesh has been in exile, even 
as predicted by Moses, ever since they “walked 
contrary unto”’ the truth as it was revealed in Jesus; 
but though the centuries have multiplied into mil- 
lenniums and though the exile has involved Ghetto and 
Pale and Pogram, they have maintained their identity 
and their ancient faith, sustained by the gracious 
assurances with which all the prophets conclude their 
oracles in the confident expectation of the ultimate 
restoration under Messianic auspices of all that Zion 
means to them; and now, just as their long deferred 
hope seems actually about to be realized even in its 
most literal application under Christian auspices, 
this message brings them timely warning of the name 
in which alone they can put their trust, the categorical 
testimony of the Scriptures they revere to the fact 

* Prof. P. Gardner, ‘‘Cambridge Biblical Essays,” p. 417.— 


Quoted by Prof. William Sanday, ‘‘Christologies Ancient and 
Modern,” p. 231. 


PREFACE 7 


that the despised Nazarene was indeed the Messiah, 
and that he whom they rejected as the Suffering 
Servant is coming again as the Conquering Christ and 
the Judge inexorable—a testimony that in its method 
and form is the reason-satisfying fulfilment of the 
groping promise of the Kabbala, the search for mystic 
“‘acceptances’’ or “‘correspondences”’ in which they 
have been so persistently interested. 

The Spiritual Daughter of Zion, too, has been in sad 
exile—persecuted like Israel according to the flesh by 
the Dragon and his brood, hidden in the “‘wilderness,”’ 
and seemingly content with the smallest of the con- 
tinents as the field of her service to God and humanity 
—but now these wilderness wanderings are revealed 
in a new light, as indeed a providential preparation 
for the task assigned. Our Great Commission, for- 
gotten and seemingly held in abeyance for so many 
centuries, now presents itself with an insistent and 
immediate imperative. The Church and Christian 
Civilization have come to the parting of the ways, 
must arise forthwith and purge themselves of every 
treason, and must then go forth to conquer the world 
in this generation—and the Voice of the Day of 
Jehovah proclaims the promised Presence of the 
Captain under whom alone such a task can be accom- 
plished, the Joshua of the New Covenant. 

Some have pictured the Second Coming of the Lord 
in colors that are altogether supernatural and beyond 
the range of human sympathies, while in reaction 
others have “‘spiritualized”’ it into practical unreality. 
This mighty event is indeed most supernatural—and 
so was the First Advent; but the prophecies of the 
Coming of the Messiah do not need to be spiritualized 
to apply to Jesus of Nazareth, and neither did they 


8 PREFACE 


require him to appear otherwise than as perfectly 
natural. The truth is that the distinction between 
the natural and the supernatural is purely subjective. 
Nevertheless, until Faith shall be lost in Sight, this 
distinction must continue to be a vital factor in 
human thought and feeling, a factor that Divine 
Wisdom could never disregard. God’s revelations 
appeal to the heart, therefore, in the realm of the 
natural and to the mind, as occasion requires, in the 
realm of the supernatural. Only they who have 
persuaded themselves to believe in the sufficiency of 
human nature as it is, and who consequently have 
small use for any religion at all, can consistently deny 
the need of a Way of Salvation, the necessity of a 
Revelation of that Way and the indispensability of 
supernatural credentials of such a Revelation. Cer- 
tainly any Revelation that claims to do more than 
merely to announce such truths as can be tested by 
reason in the light of experience—reason that, alas! 
is so often sophisticated and experience that at best is 
so utterly inadequate—needs some such attestation 
as Gideon asked—and received. 

Accordingly in this message that hails the imminent 
advent of the Living Word—no longer ‘‘incarnate’’ 
only, but also ‘glorified ’’—there is found in unstinted 
measure the necessary authentication of the super- 
natural; but for the event itself, supernal and alto- 
gether beyond the comprehension of our present 
inexperience though it must necessarily be at the 
zenith of its glory in the final consummation, colors 
are suggested that blend on the horizon with the 
ordinary landscape of nature, so that the Church may 
think of it as she thinks of all the previous chapters of 
the History of Redemption, watch for it intelligently 
and with glad anticipation—and be ready. 


PREFACE 9 


Finally, in order that there may be neither undue 
expectations nor needless apprehensions with regard 
to it, let us add that this message offers no novelties to 
replace, or to be superimposed upon, “the faith which 
was once for all delivered unto the saints.’’ There is 
here simply—and sufficiently—the turning, as it were, 
of a hitherto unobserved adjustment that brings the 
instrument of God’s revelation into such a relation 
to the eyes of today as to give clearer definition to 
the old truths made known from the beginning and 
enable us, ‘‘upon whom the ends of the ages are 
come,’’ to recognize indubitably the fulfilment of their 
foreshadowings. 


J Da VAN) B. 





CONTENTS 





PART I. ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE—FORE- 
SHADOWINGS AND PROLEGOMENA 


ibe, LOST! PROPHECY tir hie ie tis 15 
A Clue Concealed in a Forgotten 
Solin Ty er amas Nort true ie 15 
II. THe Hip TREASURE—FOUND IN AN 
EMENDED LBD ee aya eee: 27 


III. FoRESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HIsToRY. 35 
1. Jesus of Nazareth Foreshadowed in 
Israel’s National Hero......... 35 
2. The Nazarene Revealed as the Sun 
of Righteousness—His Enemies 
Foreshadowed in the Ancient 
Canaanite Worshippers of Saturn 38 
3. The Rest that Remaineth for the 
People of God; and the Righteous 
Remnant through whom the 
Joshua of the New Covenant will 
take possession of it in behalf of 
ELUMaAn Eye ore ieusni dy Cano ania 62 
4. A Foreshadowing of the Final 
Armageddon that is at last to 
deliver the Church from all the 
oppressions of the Worshippers 
Of De CU Oe  ur N nei a, 66 
5. The Prophetic Name in full. 
IV. EcHors in CHurRCH HISTORY......... a7 


ve 


CONTENTS 


THEO ENDVOR (THE CIDITE Ue Crean | 


The First Messianic Prophecy—Its 
Final Fulfilment Foreshadowed in 
the Recovery of the Lost Proph- 


PART (TT) “THE HID  PREASURES Oe 


VI. 
VII. 


VIII. 


IX. 


re 


XII. 


ZEPHANIAH 


THE PROPHET AND His NEw Book.... 
THE GREAT DAY OF JEHOVAH........ 
The Prophet’s Message to his Con- 
CEMPOTALLES Te aims eects 

THE! First: ADVENT) Hijet ao hens 
The Prophecy as it was read by St. 
Matthew suite Me Ca (cra 


The Message of the Lost Prophecy 
Reserved for the Times of its 
RECOVEry gies ed ietcie Cann sas 

THE SEVEN, PROPHECIES... 6 0)0. 0..0004 

Portents of the Second Advent and of 
the Binding of the Great Ad- 
VELSAL Yi fate net a fit gy AN CeO 

THE DEVENVORALS 100 (Ue enue Uw Si 

A Dramatization of the Protevangel 
revealing the Nature of the 
Savior’s Final Victory; the 
Church overcomes the World that 
so long has seemed triumphant in 
the Great’ Apostasy) i/n ai 

THE SEVEN COUNTERSEALS........... 

The Consummate Example of the 

Church Conformed to the World 


88 


97 
119 


119 
124 


124 


133 


133 
146 


146 
171 


171 
IQI 


CONTENTS 


distinguished from the true 
Church in its divergence both in 
doctrine and in practice with re- 
gard to the one memorial symbol 
instituted by the Master himself 191 
PU a EOS TIGMAEAN Ka hep Luna enn gh ataiee aise 203 
The Seal of the Living God and its 
Counterfeit, The Mark of the 
east ae nee NM etre a IY GH CDs 203 
XIV. THE LITTLE BooK OF THE GREAT NAME 225 


PART III. THE INTERPRETATION 


XV. VTHE PROMISED: PRESENCE). 6002/00). 260 
NING CONCERNING (ZION ih ahem rimg icc iC 290 
AYSion On the Pimes cy Me On Ze, 290 

DOV LO Op TH CHURCH oni aay a eae Ge 301 


PAS SUNINONS' A iawela deta fel un tere iahabe Ra) obs 301 


y 


i. eae 





PART I 


Seo VS Ei SOUT 


FORESHADOWINGS AND PROLEGOMENA 


NINN 





I 
THE LOST PROPHECY 


A CLuE CONCEALED IN A FORGOTTEN SPELLING 


HAT has become of St. Matthew’s Lost 
Prophecy? Students of the Word today 
confess that they can not find it anywhere in 

the Bible; but the apostle seems to have found it in 
more than one oracle, for he tells us that Jesus was 
brought up in a city called Nazareth ‘‘that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets, that 
he should be called a Nazarene’’—Matt. 2: 23. 

St. Jerome suggested that when he wrote these 
words he had in mind the Messianic title Branch, one 
of the Hebrew words for which is Netser, 183; but 
Netser is used in this sense in only one passage, Isa. 
I1: I, the usual term for the Messianic Branch being 
Tsemach, M28; and most scholars, while they acknowl- 
edge that Netser might very well have been prophet- 
ically used as a suggestion by word-play of the name 
Nazarene, nevertheless hesitate to underwrite this 
word as in itself a sufficient basis for the Apostle’s 
argument. The only alternative, therefore, to the 
inadmissible hypothesis that the Apostle is here 
chargeable with either incompetence or gross careless- 
ness would seem to be the assumption that, with the 
oracles of the Branch, there was associated in his 
thought at least one other prophecy, a more specific 
prediction that has now been lost. 

Some have conjectured that this prediction was 

perhaps that of some prophet now forgotten; but this 
| 15 


16 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


disposal of the question is altogether inconclusive, 
and its implications are contrary to the usage of St. 
Matthew, who appeals in all his other arguments to 
Scriptures recognized as canonical and still extant. 

No one will deny, however, that it is entirely 
possible for a lost prophecy, the prophecy in question, 
to lie hidden in the Bible as we have it now, unrecog- 
nized because blurred by corruption of the text, for 
such a prophecy would almost certainly be obscure 
in itself, and so would naturally be wide open to 
mistakes of the copyist. Furthermore our search for 
this particular prediction is complicated by the fact 
that we do not know how the expression ‘A Naza- 
rene’? ought to look in Hebrew. ‘The first step, 
therefore, in the recovery of this lost prophecy must 
be to determine the original Hebrew spelling of 
Nazareth. 

In the Greek of the New Testament the name of 
the city where Jesus lived is written Nafapé0, Natapar 
and Nafapa; and in the Arabic of today it is called 
En Natsarah, which is also the spelling handed down 
in the Syriac. The adjective Nazarene comes to us 
in two forms Nafwpatos and Natepyvés. An inspection 
of these variants makes evident the fact that the 
ending -ath, or -eth, was not an integral part of the 
name; for it is not always found in the Greek render- 
ings of the noun, it is never found in the forms of the 
adjective, and it is not represented in the modern 
name of the place. It would seem indeed to stamp 
Nazareth as of questionable standing in Israel, for 
in this usage as a suffix it is Canaanitish rather than 
Hebrew,* and in the Old Testament it is added as a 


* So Schroeder, Phoen. Sprache, p. 170; and Gesenius, Gram. 
§ 80. Rem. 2. a. 


THE LOST PROPHECY Li 


variant only to the names of foreign cities—viz. 
Atlon and Aulath, Betach and Tibhchath. Here was 
the sting, perhaps, in the Savior’s enigmatic de- 
nunciation of Nazareth: “I tell you there were many 
widows in Israel ... when the Heaven was shut 
up three years and six months . . . and to none of 
them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath in the 
land of Sidon, to a woman that was a widow.” Itis 
difficult to see why the people of Nazareth were so 
desperately enraged at this speech unless they felt 
that it was as much as to say: “It was not because 
there were no cities in Israel that I was brought up 
among you, ye Nazarethites, who have proved your- 
selves altogether worthy of your name. And now, 
after having despised the exceptional favor so long 
accorded you, would you make it the ground of a 
demand for others?”’ 

In the second place, it is evident—as we shall see in- 
dubitably exemplified later (in Chap. III.)—that the 
name ended with some Hebrew consonant represented 
in the Greek only by its vowel effect. Otherwise we 
should have Nazer instead of Nazera, Nazorios in- 
stead of Nazoraios, and Nazernos instead of Nazerenos. 
There are several Hebrew letters that might have such 
an effect:—Aleph, Vav, Cheth, Yod and ‘Ayin. The 
letter He might also be thought of in this connection, 
especially as it would afford a Hebrew explanation of 
the ending -eth or -ath; but, in the adjective forms, 
He would either require this same -aih—in Hebrew, 
‘ns3; in Greek, Naftwpafios; and in English Nazarethite 
(Cf. *nyai from myai)—or else it would be dropped 
altogether, leaving no effect (Cf. °20n from A2n, and 
ward from Wa). 

Aleph is in this case also impossible because it pro- 


18 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


vides no root from which the name may be derived; 
and the same thing is true of Vav and Yod. We must 
choose, therefore, between Cheth and ‘Ayin as the 
final radical of the root we are seeking; and we are 
confronted with a like dilemma with regard to the 
first radical, for the imitial “‘N’’ of the name—there 
being no quadriliteral to account for it—must be 
regarded as a preformative, and the “Z”’ that repre- 
sents the first radical in the Western transcriptions 
may stand for either a Zayin or a Tsade in the original. 
We have, accordingly, the four Semitic roots MA, yn, 
may and yoy from which, so far as its form is concerned, 
Nazareth may be derived. 

The first two of these roots, those beginning with 
Zayin—Zarach, which connotes the glory of the sun- 
rise, and Zara‘, which means ‘‘to sow, to plant’’—we 
may dismiss at once. In the first place, their mean- 
ings do not fit the locality and its reputation—for we 
may be certain that its evil reputation could never 
have become proverbial among such realists as the 
ancient Semites unless its name also was capable of an 
opprobrious suggestion, or at least was not of the 
Opposite import; in the second place, the evidence of 
the prophetic word-play, Netser, 183, is in favor of 
Tsade; and finally and conclusively, Tsade is found in 
the name as it is represented in both Arabic and 
Syriac. There remain therefore only the two alterna- 
tives, Tsara‘, a8, and Tsarach, Mv. 

Tsara‘ was obsolete in Biblical Hebrew, but its 
meaning as gathered from the cognate languages was 
“to throw down, to prostrate” and also ‘‘to humble 
one’s self.’’ Its Hebrew derivatives signify “‘leprosy”’ 
and ‘‘hornets’”’ and doubtless furnished many a jest 
in harmony with the evil reputation of Nazareth. 


THE LOST PROPHECY 19 


Zorah, *Y8, the birth-place of Samson, derived its 
name from this root, evidently because it was at the 
“Going-down”’ from the hill country into the plain 
(cf. Josh. 15: 33). It commanded the pass at its 
lower extremity (cf. 2 Chron. 11: 10). Nazareth, 
on the other hand, though it is in a little valley, is 

nevertheless high up among the hills. 

Tsarach, n\8, represents two distinct roots. 

I. Tsarach, Arab. @3°, “to shout aloud,” ‘to pro- 
claim,’ could hardly furnish a name for a town. It 
is, however, as we shall find, the source of a wonder- 
fully appropriate word-play that is most skilfully 
utilized in the great oracle that sets forth the name of 
the Nazarene. 

II. Tsarach, Arab. @53°, was obsolete in literary 
Hebrew; and in fact it has only recently gained the 
recognition of Hebrew lexicographers. 

In the cognate language it means “‘to excavate, to 
rend open,’ and from it is derived the Arabic word for 
“Sepulcher,”’ Tsarich. Its only Hebrew derivative 
is also Tsariach, m¥, which doubtless had the same 
meaning originally, but which is applied to “‘cave-like 
hiding places”’ in the two Bible passages where alone 
it occurs. In Judges 9: 46 & 49, it is associated with 
a heathen temple—apparently the dark and cavernous 
and tomb-like interior of the temple itself in which the 
inhabitants of the town took refuge. In I. Sam. 13:6, 
it is mentioned in connection with the “caves’’ and 
“thickets”? and “rocks’’ and “pits”? in which the 
people hid themselves, and the Revised Version 
renders it ‘‘covert.’’ Moreover, as shown in the 
Arabic, the final radical of II. Tsarach is the soft 
Cheth that easily disappears in a lengthened vowel or 
a breathing.* 

* Cf. Apes from DIM in the Sept. of Judg. 8: 13; and the variant 


20 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


This root, therefore, furnishes a derivation for the 
name of Nazareth that accounts for the obscuration 
of the spelling and that fits in its meaning both the 
situation and the reputation of the city, hidden as it 
is in a crater-like valley high up among the hills above 
the rich plain of Esdraelon and commanding all the 
great highways of that cross-roads of ancient com- 
merce—just the place for the covert of a gang of out- 
laws. The artificial caves, or sepulchers, excavated 
in the lime-stone spur that juts into the valley over 
against the town from its eastern mountain wall are 
also in accordance with this derivation—very sug- 
gestively so, as we shall see later. 

It would seem then that the Hebrew spelling of 
Nazareth was M¥3—or, with its Canaanitish suffix, 
nnoy2—and if later on we find reason to believe that 
this was not the original form of the name, we will 
still be able to find in the fitness of its meaning as 
derived from II. Tsarach the reason why it became 
the finally persisting form. Certainly, with this 
derivation, Nazarene, even apart from the nuance in 
which it accords with the reproach cast upon him, 
was peculiarly prophetic of the life of Jesus; for he 
was born in the cave of Bethlehem, he dwelt in the 
City of Nazareth, the hiding-place of his immaturity 
foretold, as we shall see, by the prophet whose name 
means “‘ Jehovah hides’’; and he was buried in a rock- 
hewn sepulcher that was rent open, M¥3, when he rose 
“from the grave.” 

To these indications that the true spelling of 
Nazareth has been found—the spelling in the days of 
Jesus, at least—is added the confirmation of a series 


renderings of Timnath-Serach in Greek set forth in Chap. III. . 
following. 


THE LOST PROPHECY 21 


of rapier-like word-plays that gleam even through the 
double veil of the translations in the story of the 
Calling of Nathaniel told in the First Chapter of the 
Gospel according to St. John.* 

“Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no 


*In view of the fact that to the Jews Hebrew was in New 
Testament times, as it is now, the widely studied classic and- 
sacred language of school and synagogue, of Scripture and hymn 
and prayer, the completeness of the word-plays revealed by it is 
sufficient warrant for the reconstruction of these conversations in 
pure Hebrew rather than in the problematical Hebrew-Aramaic 
Palestinian dialect of those times. With sufficient knowledge 
granted to the speakers, the exigencies of the paronomastic 
repartee would account for their use of the classic tongue; and 
besides, that Jesus should address Nathanael in Hebrew would 
be in line with his whole appeal to the man whom he characterized 
as intensively an Israelite, for certainly the Messiah would be 
supposed to be conversant with the language of the Law and the 
Prophets—and that Jesus was in fact a Master of the Hebrew is 
strongly evidenced by his reading from the réle of the Prophets in 
the synagogue service (Luke 4: 17) and by his controversial use of 
*“‘It is written,’’ which would have full weight with his opponents 
only as his quotations were adduced in the original. (See 
Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 1. 129, 130, 252.) 
Like the Messiah himself, a man who could be called an ‘‘ Ezrach”’ 
would quite certainly be familiar with the ancient tongue of his 
fathers; and tradition, as reported by St. Augustine and St. 
Gregory in their Commentaries on John’s Gospel (See McClintock 
and Strong, Vol. VI, p. 859d), represents Nathanael as a man 
learned in the Law of Moses. In that case his brother, Philip, 
would doubtless not be altogether without such learning—and 
in any case, the fact is that neither in vocabulary nor in construc- 
tion would the simple Hebrew here set forth present any diff- 
culties even to the merely average Palestinian Jew of those days. 
The possible question concerning I. N83 is answered by the fact 
that Netser, the Messianic BRANCH, was undoubtedly well 
known to every Israelite; while II. "83, though written %%3 in 
Biblical Aramaic, as also sometimes in Biblical Hebrew, is found 
written 83 both in Old Aramaic and in the so-called New 
Hebrew. 


22 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


guile,” said Jesus—or rather, so St. John parphrases 
what Jesus said when Nathaniel was presented to 
him. Nathaniel was naturally surprised at such a 
greeting from a stranger—he was more than surprised ; 
his answer was a startled question, “ Whence knowest 
thoume?” His reception by the Prophet of Nazareth 
was amazingly and uncomfortably reminiscent of his 
recent conversation with Philip and of the reception 
he had given Philip’s joyful assurance, “We have 
found him of whom Moses in the Law and the prophets 
wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Na- 
thaniel had discounted it utterly, and had disposed of 
it with the witty rejoinder, “Can any good thing come 
out of Nazareth?” 

Now the context shows that he did not pronounce 
the name of that city of proverbial evil repute as if it 
were derived from 3 ¥, Tsara‘’—when the force of his 
question would have been merely the cheap sneer, 
“Can any good thing come out of that pestiferous 
place?’’—but that, using the full Canaanitish form 
of this name, he gave it a twist that faced it squarely 
against the claim that Jesus was the Messiah, pro- 
nouncing it as if it were Netsur-Cheth, nn“). This 


was as much as to say, “‘What! Could the Messiah 
be reared amid the guile of the heathen?’’ For, 
though Netser (¥3 from IT. 9¥3) is Isaiah’s term for the 


Messianic Branch, these same radicals pronounced 
Netsur ("¥2 from I. 983) suggest the idea of “guile,” 


something ‘‘hidden’’—cf. Prov. 7: 10; while Cheth, nn, 


was the eponym of the Hittites, the mightiest of the 
Gentile inhabitants of Canaan. And now Jesus hails 
Nathaniel as no Hittite, no heathen of any sort, no 
guileful denizen of Netsur-ach, but as an “Israelite in- 


THE LOST PROPHECY 23 


deed,” an ’Ezrach, M's, in whom there is ‘‘no guile,” 
no Nefsur. Let us note in passing that by this same 
word-play ‘m3, “‘Nazarene,’ becomes Natsura ‘i, 
“suileful,’? whence the otherwise inexplicable form 
Nafwpatos, Nazoratos.* 

Nathaniel had rejected the prophet whom Philip 
characterized by the happy word play: ; 

Han WNetser-acht, *nsx7n—a play on the name 
Nazarene—and the measure of Nathaniel’s rejection 
is to be seen in the fullness of his brother’s confession; 
for with Netser, the Messianic BRANCH, set forth 
and emphasized in its enunciation, Philip’s character- 
ization becomes: “‘Jesust the Son of Joseph is the 
Netser, O my brother.’’ That these two apostles, 
Philip and Nathaniel (or Bartholomew), were in fact 
brothers is no new suggestion, but is a widely accepted 
inference from this incident and from the fact that 
they are always listed together in the Gospels, just 
as are Peter and Andrew, and James and John. 

Jesus, notwithstanding his evident knowledge of 
this conversation, accepts Nathaniel, but does so 
with the pointedly suggestive salutation: 

Hen ’Ezracht, 11837, which is literally, “‘ Behold 
an Israelite indeed!’ The term ’Ezrach is the 
equivalent of our expression “To the manor born,’ 
and is therefore the exact antithesis of Nathaniel’s 
implied aspersion of “The Nazarene.” In the 

* This more derisive form of the adjective was the one finally 
accepted by the followers of the Nazarene as a name of reproach 
gladly shared with their Master—Cf. the Natwpato. of the fourth 
century. The Jews then reverted (See the Talmud) to the matter 
of fact form Nagepnvds, which, aside from some evidently erroneous 
MSS. of Luke 24: 9, occurs in the New Testament only in the 


earliest of the Gospels, that of St. Mark, who uses it exclusively. 
} This is the order in the Greek of John 1: 45. 


24 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


Septuagint, and also in Lucian’s version, the adjective 
form ’Ezrachi, regarded as a surname or distinctive 
epithet, is rendered ‘‘The Israelite” (I. Kings 5: 11; 
and the superscription of Ps. 88 and 99); and this 
fact, regardless of the question of the propriety of 
such a meaning as applied to Ethan and Heman, 
must be taken as reflecting a current usage in which 
this form of the word had the force of “Israelite 
indeed.”’ 

Nathaniel had stated his objection to Jesus thus: 

Mah tobh min-Netsur-Cheth?—‘What good thing 
(can come) from (Nazareth) the guile of Cheth?”’ 

Jesus’ commendation of Nathaniel could therefore 
very well be: 

Mah tobh! Min-netsur chath’’—" How good he is! 
‘““From guile he turns away in dismay.’”’ For nnn 
construed with j®, see Isa. 31:4,9; 51:7, etc. For 
the interpretation as a pregnant construction, see 
Davidson, Heb. Syntax, § 101. 

Imagine the perplexity of this guileless Israelite! 
How could it be possible that Jesus had heard his 
conversation with Philip—or was Philip right, and 
was this indeed the Messiah? Could heaven-born 
Wisdom have countered his cavil more completely? 
Then, too, as we learn from the Master’s allusion to it 
(John 1: 50, 51), Nathaniel had just been meditating 
in his hour of devotion upon the story of the peculiarly 
reprehensible guile with which the young Jacob who 
was afterward to become Israel had supplanted his 
brother Esau, and of the divine mercy that sought and 
found the fleeing transgressor in the memorable vision 
at Bethel—and the words of Jacob as he awoke and 
realized the significance of his dream are very sugges- 
tive in this connection: ‘‘And Jacob awaked out of 


THE LOST PROPHECY 25 


his sleep, and he said, Surely Jehovah is in this place; 
and I knew it not’’ (Gen. 28: 16). Moreover, as is 
now universally acknowledged, Nathaniel is to be 
identified with the apostle who is called in the Synoptic 
Gospels by his surname, or patronymic, Bartholomew, 
2n-3, a name that literally interpreted means “‘Son 
of the Furrow.” The salutation with which Jesus ° 
received this “‘Israelite indeed,’’ Hen ’Ezracht, carries, 
therefore, a suggestion, is indeed radically a synonym, 
of this more familiar surname; for ’Ezrach, when it 
also is literally interpreted, signifies, as it is phrased 
by Brown-Driver-Briggs (p. 280), ‘One arising from 
the soil.’””. When, therefore, in reply to the startled 
question—‘‘ Whence knowest thou me?’’—Jesus an- 
swered his heart-searchings as well with the astonish- 
ing declaration, ‘‘ Before Philip called thee when thou 
wast under the fig-tree I saw thee,’’ Nathaniel had 
abundant reason for his unreserved confession, 
“Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King 
of Israel.’’ 

It is in accordance with the place of these word- 
plays in the incident that the Savior’s answer to 
Nathaniel’s question carried his knowledge of the 
questioner back only far enough to include the colloquy 
that he had just echoed so convincingly, and back to 
the devotions under the fig-tree “‘ before Philip called,”’ 
in order to foil any suspicion of irony in the commenda- 
tion of nobility of character that served at the same 
time as a chastisement of perversity of opinion, and 
in order also to set forth the truth that in the Nazarene 
is to be found the fulfilment of the promise to Jacob 
that Nathaniel had just been reading—‘“In thee and 
in thy seed shall all the families of the Earth be 
blessed”? (Gen. 28: 14)—the fulfilment indeed of the 


26 ST. MATTHEW’S CLUE 


glorious hope revealed in the vision at Bethel; for 
Jesus answered and said unto him, “Because I said 
unto thee, I saw thee underneath the fig-tree be- 
lievest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than 
these.” And he said unto him, “Verily, verily, I say 
unto you, Ye shall see the heavens opened, and the 
angels of God ascending and descending upon the 
Son of Man” (John 1: 50, 51). 


iI 
THE HID TREASURE 


FOUND IN AN EMENDED TEXT 


HE Story of the Calling of Nathaniel does indeed 
afford a striking confirmation of our conclu- 
sions concerning the spelling of Nazareth; but 

at the same time, it makes very clear the fact that 
Nathaniel, like the Jews of that day generally,* and 
like the translators of the Septuagint as well, knew of 
no prophecy that the Messiah ‘should be called a 
Nazarene.” It is not surprising, therefore, that even 
now, when we are convinced that we have learned how 
to look for it, we still have to admit that the Hebrew 
text of today does not seem to contain the word 
Nazarene or any equivalent phrase. It does not 
follow, however, that this was true of St. Matthew’s 
copy of the prophets, for in his day the Masorites 
had not standardized the text and there were as many 
differences between Hebrew manuscripts then as 
there are between the Masoretic text and the Septu- 
agint now. It is entirely reasonable to assume, 
therefore, that St. Matthew gives us a rendering of 
the true text of an Old Testament passage in which 
both the Seventy and the Masorites followed mistaken 
variants; that possibly he interprets for us a prophecy 
whose full significance had not been understood before, 
an oracular prediction whose double meaning was 
perhaps never intended to be apprehended before the 
* Cf. John 7: 42 and 52. 
27 


28 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


event. Such “‘ dark sayings ”’ are peculiarly liable to 
be distorted by the copyist—but He who inspired 
them is able to preserve them, and is able also, even 
by such means as that of St. Matthew’s seeming in- 
advertence, to provide the clue that in due season will 
lead to the discovery of the hidden treasure. 

Now it is evident that such a passage as this could 
not have been couched in the entirely obvious terms 
that seem to be implied in St. Matthew’s citation as 
it is rendered in the Authorized Version—" that it 
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, 
He shall be called a Nazarene.’ The fact is, how- 
ever, that, as we shall see in the denouement, as the 
apostle himself takes pains to indicate, and as is re- 
flected in the more accurate translation of the Revised 
Versions—‘‘ that it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken through the prophets, that He should be called 
a Nazarene ’’—we have here, not a literai quotation 
of one particular prophetic utterance, but a statement 
of the general import of several foreshadowings en- 
tirely different in their modes of expression. 

The references to the ancient scriptures that are 
found in St. Matthew’s records of the sayings of the 
Master, and in his reports of the answers of the 
Scribes and of the suggestions of the Tempter, 
naturally reflect the style of the several speakers; 
but in his own appeals to the authority of the written 
word, * the apostle expresses himself with the precision 
of a mathematical formula, yet not without the allevia- 
tion of a saving measure of variety. The full pattern 
of his thought in the introduction of a specific quota- 

* Matt. 15) 17523 IV Taye Vile Pail Le tg oe cece 
XXI. 4; XXVII. 9. See also XXVII. 35. St. Matthew’s 


formula has also been faultily imitated by the interpolator in 
Mark XIII. 14. Cf. Matt. XXIV. 15. 


THE HID TREASURE 29 


tion is to be seen in the expression, ‘‘ that it might 
be fulfilled which was revealed* by the Lord through 
the prophet, who said’’ (Chap. II, v. 15). This 
expression is elsewhere shortened, and is sometimes 
varied by the notation of the name of the prophet; 
but, with two exceptions—and these exceptions are 
exactly such as to prove the rule—there is everywhere © 
found the unmistakable core, 70d pnbéy . . . dat rod 
mpogentov déyovtos, ‘ which was revealed through the 
prophet who said.”’” One of these seeming exceptions 
is found in a reference to the eighteenth verse of the 
Twenty-second Psalm—“ that it might be fulfilled 
which was spoken byf the prophet, They parted my 
garments among them, and upon my vesture did 
they cast lots’? (Chap. XXVII, v. 35). Here in- 
deed déyorzos, “who said,” is omitted before a specific 
quotation; but this passage is now acknowledged to 
be an interpolation, and is not retained in the Revised 
Versions. The other deviation from the regular 
formula is to be seen right here in connection with 
the Lost Prophecy, which the apologists would have 
deleted long ago if they could—but here there is no 
lapsus either of the copyist or of the author himself. 
This is the only prediction that St. Matthew cites on 
the authority of more than one prophet. Accordingly 


* That ‘‘revealed,”’ rather than merely ‘‘spoken,’’ was the 


force of 70 pnftv in the mind of St. Matthew, is evident from his 
use of it with reference to the abomination of desolation “‘ which 
was revealed through Daniel the prophet,” 76 pybey 6a Aavujd 70d 
mpognrov (Matt. 24: 15). This passage, in which he renders the 
thought of the Master himself into Greek, indicates perhaps the 
genesis of the Apostle’s own formula of scripture reference. 

t In Matt. 2: 17, some MSS. give ind, ‘‘by,’’ instead of 6:4, 
“‘through,’’ which is of course a clerical error. This obtuse 
blunder is invariable, however, in the interpolated passages, 
Matt. 27: 35, and Mark 13: 14. 


30 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


the formula with which he introduces it becomes, 
To pnbev dia Tv rpogntwr éti, ““ which was revealed 
through the prophets, that.’’ Instead of the participle 
Neyovrav, “‘ who said,’ which could only introduce a 
direct and specific quotation, we find here the con- 
junction éri, “‘ that,” which prepares us for an in- 
direct and ad sensum citation such as is required in a 
reference to several variant foreshadowings. That 
this is really the force of the change in the formula 
here is substantiated by the fact that such a master of 
Greek as St. Jerome, to whom indeed it was a living 
language, could suggest the pictures of the Messianic 
Branch as perhaps the repositories of the prophecy to 
which the Evangelist referred. 

What we are to look for, then, is an oracle that for 
some good reason was devised for the purpose of con- 
cealing as well as revealing, that has perhaps been 
still further obscured by corruption of the text, and 
that, when it is properly interpreted, will be found to 
declare, not in the set phrase ‘‘ He shall be called,” 
but nevertheless with equal explicitness, that the 
Messiah was to be known as a “ Nazarene.” We 
have a right, furthermore, to expect that this oracle 
will be found in a passage that can be legitimately 
construed as a Messianic prophecy when once it has 
been divested of its habiliments of disguise. 

Just such an oracle is now disclosed in the fourteenth 
verse of the first chapter of the Book of Zephaniah, a 
passage that is indeed most appropriate, for it strikes 
the key-note of a prophecy that tells of the rejection 
of the Mighty-to-save—which is the connotation of 
the name “ Nazarene’’—and an emendation, the 
slightest possible, and one altogether reasonable, dis- 
closes an oracle that answers the requirements of the 


THE HID TREASURE 31 


Lost Prophecy of St. Matthew in every respect. Com- 
mentators have generally regarded the text here as 
hopelessly corrupt, and emendations the most radical 
have been suggested ;* but to bring the verse back to 
self-consistency and into full accord with its context, 
we only need to restore a Nun, “‘N ,’ that has been 
mistaken for a Resh, ‘‘R’’; and we can do this with- - 
out violence because, while these two letters are quite 
different in the later Square Character when it is 
carefully written and as it is printed to-day (vz. 3 
and 1), in the older forms of the alphabet they were 
sometimes very much alike—as, for instance, on Old 
Hebrew coins—and even in the Square Character as 
written by the Rabbins they are sometimes repre- 
sented by crescent figures that only the context can 
discriminate. f 

Such a confusion between these letters is exemplified 
in the name of one of the companions of Zerubbabel, 
who is called Rechum, Dinn, in the Hebrew and in the 
Alexandrine MS. of the Septuagint of Ezra 2: 2; 
while his name is given as Nechum, o\n3, in Lucian’s 
version of Ezra 2: 2, and in both the Hebrew and 
Septuagint of Neh. 7: 7. On the same principle, 
Wellhausen would read ‘9m instead of *91N3 in Hos. 
11:8. (See these words in Brown-Driver-Briggs.) 

The text as it stands reads: 


133 OY MY W-— Dy 3p 


and the American Revised Version translates it, © 
“The great day of Jehovah is near, it is near and 
hasteneth greatly, even the voice of the day of Jehovah; 

*Cf. J. M. Powis Smith, The International Critical Com- 
mentary.—Micah, Zephaniah & Nahum, pp. 194, 203, 204, 209, 210. 


+See Table of Semitic Alphabets in Mitchell’s Gesenius, 
Rev. Ed. 


B32 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


the mighty man crieth there bitterly.” In effect, 
therefore, the revisers gave up the attempt to interpret 
this passage. 

As amended it reads: 


133 OY MII) OY asp 
which, with ov pointed nv instead of the Masoretic 
hw, may be rendered: “ The Great Day of Jehovah 


is near, it is near and hasteneth greatly. (Hark!) 
The Voice of the Day of Jehovah! What is pro- 
claimed? The Name of the Mighty One.” (Cf. 
Chap. 3: 12.) Now by a most perfect paranomasia, 
“‘ the name of the Mighty One ”’ is literally contained 
n “‘ What is proclaimed ’’; for n7y2, which we have 
taken as equivalent to mys, ‘‘ What is proclaimed,”’ 
may also be regarded as equivalent to myxjo,* Min 
Natsarach, ‘‘Of Nazareth,’ or ‘‘Nazarene.”’ Con- 
struing it thus, we may read the passage as St. 
Matthew evidently did: ** (Hark!) The Voice of the 
Day of Jehovah, ‘NAZARENE IS TO BE THE 
NAME OF THE MIGHTY ONE.’”’ 

If this is a legitimate construction of Zephaniah’s 
Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah, it unquestionably 
brings to light just such a prediction as is implied in 
St. Matthew’s Lost Prophecy—and we shall see that 
it is indeed an integral part of the book, that it is in 
fact the corner-stone of its whole structure and fits 
into the prophet’s message, not only as it may be con- 
strued in application to the times of St. Matthew, but 
also as it must have been construed by the prophet’s 
contemporaries. We shall see, too, that even more 

*So ON? nap fay, ‘‘Ibzan of Bethlehem,” Jud. 12: 4; etc. 


Cf. also "Inooty rév ard Nagapéé, ‘‘ Jesus of Nazareth,’ ’ Acts 10: 38; 
John 1: 45; Matt. 21:11. 


THE HID TREASURE 33 


circumstantially and with the certification of a highly 
and symmetrically organized background of in- 
dubitable marks of design, this prophecy, lost for so 
many centuries, fits into a message for the very day 
of its recovery, a message that is peculiarly appropri- 
ate to the oracle that carries it and to the prophet in 
whose book it has been hidden so securely. 

In truth the Lost Prophecy has been found just when 
and where the inevitable after-thought would recom- 
mend the search for it—in the midst of the unprec- 
edented conditions of this hour of crisis, conditions 
that must be mended and that can never be allowed to 
recur if irretrievable disaster is not to ensue; and in 
the theme-oracle of Zephaniah, the Prophet of the 
Last Day. ‘ 

Moreover, like the Voice from the burning bush, the 
oracle of the name of the prophet himself speaks in 
confirmation of the providential nature and prophetic 
import of the seeming loss and opportune recovery of 
the key-word of his book. It has long been recognized 
that the names of the prophets whose oracles are 
enshrined in the Canon of Sacred Scripture are them- 
selves oracular and suggestive of the outstanding 
characteristics of the message or commission with 
which each was intrusted. Jsaiah, for instance, de- 
lights to speak of the “‘Salvation of Jehovah,’’ which 
is both the meaning of his name and the theme of his 
prophecies. So too Nahum alternately brings his 
people words of “consolation ’’ and in contrast paints 
the retribution that is to come upon their enemies. 
Jeremiah was the prophetic statesman fitted for the 
times whom “Jehovah appointed’”’ even before he 
was born (Jer. 1: 15). Ezekiel’s task is likewise 
specifically stated in terms of the meaning of his name 


34 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


(Ezek. 2:4; 3:7, 8,9); and Micah himself appeals to 
the oracle of his name—‘"‘ Who is like Jehovah? ’’—as 
confirming the gracious offer of pardon with which he 
was commissioned (Mic. 7:18). This element in the 
apparatus of divine revelation is emphasized by the 
direct intervention of the heavenly messenger to 
determine both the personal name of Jesus and his 
place-name Nazarene, as also to give the name John, 
‘“‘Jehovah is gracious,’ to him who was to be the 
Voice in the Wilderness announcing the First Advent. 
It is therefore altogether in accordance with the 
analogy of prophecy and an indication of the im- 
portance of the Lost Prophecy that the prophet in 
whose book its treasures have been hidden and pre- 
served so long should bear the aptly suggestive name 
of Zephaniah, m:b¥, ‘* Jehovah hides, preserves, 
treasures up’’—and we shall find that these hid 
treasures are indeed abundantly worthy of the 
emphasis thus placed upon them and of all that has 
been involved in their preparation and preservation 
against the day of their need. 


ii 
FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 


1. JEsuS OF NAZARETH FORESHADOWED IN ISRAEL’S 
NATIONAL HERO 


HE vindication of St. Matthew would hardly 
4p seem entirely satisfactory if it rested only on 
the one specific prophecy of Zephaniah and 
the uncertain implications of Isaiah’s reference to the 
Messiah as a Netser, a ‘‘ Branch,’ a ‘‘Tender Shoot’’; 
for he says that the prediction of the place-name of 
Jesus “‘was spoken through the prophets ’’—using the 
plural; but another unquestionable foreshadowing of 
the fact that Jesus, the Joshua of the New Covenant, 
was to be called a Nazarene, is now to be seen in the 
name of the place chosen as his portion in Canaan by 
Joshua, the Son of Nun, the type of him who was to 
lead Spiritual Israel into the Promised Land—cf. Heb. 
4: 8. Here will be found not only a striking con- 
firmation of Muin- Natserach, ms, as the Lost 
Prophecy of the name of the Mighty One, but prec- 
edents also for the peculiarities of its interpretation. 
This place is first mentioned in Joshua 19: 49 and 50: 
“So they made an end of distributing the land for 
inheritance by the borders thereof: and the Children 
of Israel gave an inheritance to Joshua the Son of 
Nun in the midst of them; according to the Com- 
mandment of Jehovah they gave him the city which 
he asked, even Timnath-Serach, Mmo-nian, in the hill- 
country of Ephraim; and he built the city and dwelt 
therein.” 
5) 


36 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


The relationship between the name of this city and 
that of Nazareth or WNatserach, the city of Jesus, 
becomes apparent if it is written as one word Tim- 
natserach mipnion (=nms20n)—and this method of 
writing it was always employed by the translators of 
the Septuagint, in which it is found in the two forms 
Oauvacapax and Oayuvafcapa. ‘The same construction 
is frequently followed in the Latin of the Vulgate also, 
where the name appears as either Thamnath-Saraa or 
Thamnatsare. In these transcriptions not only do the 
elements of the name show a tendency to coalesce as 
they have in the name as it developed in its application 
to the sister city of Nazareth, but it is to be observed 
also that the final guttural is usually dropped, leaving 
its effect in the lengthening of the vowel, exactly as 
was assumed in our search for the spelling of Nazareth. 

It may be accepted then that the name of the city 
where Jesus was brought up is fundamentally the 
same as that of the city of Joshua—and this assump- 
tion will meet unfailing confirmation. It is readily 
seen that, with the northern Canaanitish or Phcenician 
suffix -eth added to it, Timnatserach(eth) must strongly 
tend to become Muatserach-eth—especially in view of 
the fact that Munath, nod, is a close synonym of 
Timnath—and that this in turn would certainly be 
shortened to Natserach-eth. 

There has been considerable speculation concerning 
the original form and etymology of the name of 
Joshua’s city, and also some uncertainty as to the 
location of his portion in Israel. Two sites have been 
proposed, Kefar Cheres, nine miles south of Nablus, 
and Jubneh, seventeen miles west of north from 
Jerusalem. The latter was first suggested by Dr. 
Eli Smith* and is now accepted by Buhl (Geog., 

* Bib, Sacra., 1843, p. 478 ff. 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 37 


p. 170) and by Brown-Driver-Briggs (p. 5846). Both 
sites are notable for the remarkable tombs found near 
them, but at Tibneh especially there is an ancient and 
extensive cemetery just south of the tell and on the 
north side of a high mountain, doubtless the ‘ Moun- 
tain of Gaash”’ mentioned in Josh. 24: 30, and Judges 
2:9, where the sepulchers are comparable only to the ° 
tombs of the Kings near Jerusalem. Whatever the 
original form of the name may have been, therefore, 
and regardless of its true derivation, Timnath-Serach, 
map nj9n, was certain to be associated in the oriental 
mind of that day, prone as it was to a punning popular 
etymology, with the peculiarly appropriate homo- 
phone Timna(th)-Tserach, mosinison, “Place of 
Sepulture’’—from f0n, “region,’”’ and II. my, ‘‘to 
excavate,’ from which is derived the Arab, Tsarich, 
“‘Sepulcher,’’ and from which comes also the Heb. 
Tsariach, which doubtless had originally the same 
meaning (See Chap. I.). 

The name thus rendered blends suggestively with 
the fact that the old warrior was far past the four 
score years that is the exceptional allotment of human 
life when he chose this region as his inheritance in the 
Land of Promise. It is indeed as his burial place 
rather than as his dwelling-place that Timna(th)- 
Tserach is remembered; and on the background of a 
meaning of such seeming ill-omen, the pronunciation 
of the name Joshua used in choosing this town as his 
portion in Israel shines out as a most glorious prophecy 
of faith and hope—it bears witness also to his own self- 
denial. Timnath-Serach, mo-n3on, in which Tsade is 
resolved into T and S, may mean “‘ The Portion that is 
left over ’—which strikingly underscores the fact 
that Joshua, who might have had the first choice, 


38 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


was the last to receive his inheritance and was content 
with a comparatively barren region to the north of 
Mt. Gaash, ‘‘The Quaking Mountain,” a region noted 
only for its ravines (Cf. II. Sam. 23: 30 and I. Chron. 
II: 32) and its cemetery. But Zimnaih-Serach may 
also mean *‘ A Boundless Portion,” a portion spiritual 
and eternal, an inheritance beyond the grave. It is 
the old hero’s confession that even after having re- 
ceived his portion in Canaan, he was still a stranger 
and a pilgrim on the Earth and was on his way to 
‘fa better country, that is, a heavenly,’’ even to “‘the 
city that hath the foundations, whose architect and 
builder is God”’ (Heb. 11: 9-16). 


2. THe NAZARENE REVEALED AS THE SUN OF RIGHT- 
EOUSNESS, THE HOPE OF THE AGES—HIS 
ENEMIES FORESHADOWED IN THE 
ANCIENT CANAANITE Wor- 

SHIPPERS OF CHERES- 

SATURN 


The name of Joshua’s city is therefore indeed a 
prophecy of the Hope of Israel, attested by the very 
signature, nN, of the Nazarene, M¥, who rose “from 
the grave.’ It is the first recorded whisper of the 
Great Name; and in the changes rung upon it, there 
are exemplified the same peculiarities of construction 
that were later employed, as we shall see, in the Book 
of Zephaniah. We have just noted the significant 
play upon Ysade and its phonetic equivalents in 
Aap "n2oN and my2[on], and now we must consider the 
equally significant metathesis of the distinctive ele- 
ment of Timnath-Serach; for in Judges 2: 9 and also 
in I. Makk. 9: 50, it is written DIN“nIDN, Timnath- 
Cheres, ‘‘The Place of the Sun.” Some, regarding 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 39 


this as the original form of the name and assuming 
that the place was a center of sun-worship, would 
explain the reverse reading Serach, MD, as occasioned 
by an effort to avoid the idolatrous suggestion of 
Cheres, DIN. It may be unreservedly accepted that 
Timnath- Cheres was indeed the original form of the 
name of this place, for Cheres was unquestionably the © 
name of a solar deity—that it was sometimes used as a 
synonym of Shemesh, the more familiar name of the 
sun-god, is indicated in Judges 1: 35 and Jer. 19: 18 
(some MSS.); but that the author of the Book of 
Joshua could have been offended by any idolatrous 
suggestion in this name, when he had no scruples 
against writing Beth Shemesh (Cf. Josh. 15: 10 and 15 
other times), is altogether unthinkable; and that he 
was not at all tinctured with the later aversion to 
the mere mention of the heathen deities is witnessed 
by his frequent use, for instance, of such a name as 
Baal Gad (Josh. 11: 17 etc.). We may be assured, 
therefore, that we have in the metathesis of this name, 
not an example of euphemism, but another example 
of the paronomasia that played such a prominent part 
in the religion of the ancient Semites. 

It would seem, then, that in the days of Canaan’s 
apostasy, ZJimnath-Cheres—like Kutha, the famous 
Babylonian “City of Adoration’? with its great 
temple E. SHID. LAM., ‘The House of Shadow ’’— 
was devoted to the worship of the Sun, the hot Sun 
of the afternoon, the Sun in his might going down into 
the Realm of Darkness, but only to return victoriously 
inthe morning. For Cheres was the “ Burning Sun’’;* 


* That Charas, DIM and wan, the root from which Cheres is 
derived, which is not found as a verb in extant Hebrew literature, 
signified ‘“‘to burn,” is evident from (1) Cheres, ‘‘the Afternoon 


AO ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


and Nergal, the patron deity of Kutha, was the 
Babylonian god of the sun in his fiery might, a de- 
stroyer, the war-god, the god of pestilence and the 
lord of the Realm of the Dead. 

And right here is doubtless to be found the decisive 
factor in the origin of the peculiar anagrammatic word- 
play on the name of the place. We are warranted in 
assuming that, like E. SHID. LAM. in Kutha, the 
temple of Cheres-Nergal in Timnath-Cheres repre- 
sented the realm he ruled, the realm of the grave; 
and we are further warranted in the conclusion that 
its characteristic feature was a Tsertach, a sepulchral 
chamber, for that such a chamber was sometimes a 
feature of temple structure in this very region is 
witnessed by the TYsertach of ’El Berith, or Baal 
Berith,* in which the people of the tower of Shechem 


Sun’’; (2) Cheres, ‘‘an incurable inflammation” (Deut. 28: 27); 
and (3) Cheres, ‘‘ pottery ’’—so called, not because made of ‘‘clay,” 
as has been supposed, but because ‘“‘burnt’’ in the kiln, as is clear 
from Jer. 19: 1, when this passage is read in the light of Jer. 
18: 1-4and 19: 11. For the whole force of the prophet’s figure 
depends on the assumption that the Cheres he uses as a symbol of 
Jerusalem is not mere ‘‘clay,’’ which might still be plastic, but is 
pottery that has been “‘burnt’’ and made hard so that when 
broken it ‘‘can not be made whole again.’”’ Compare MIDIN WY 
in this same passage (Jer. I9: 2) as herein elucidated (see p. 72 
following); and also (Ww Nn—wsn— DN, “hot east wind”’ 
(So H. Steiner), Brown-Driver-Briggs, p. 362 a. 

*’E] Berith, ‘‘God of the Covenant,’’ is of course a title 
rather than a name. It is found only in this passage and in the 
preceding chapter (Judg. 8: 33), where it is applied in the form 
Baal Berith to the false god of Israel’s apostasy after the death of 
Gideon. The Tserfach in his temple would indicate that he is 
to be identified with Cheres-Molech; and that Molech was wor- 
shipped by the inhabitants of Shechem is suggested by the name 
of Abimelech, whose mother was one of them. It would seem, 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 4I 


took refuge from the vengeance of Abimelech (Judg. 
9: 46 and 49). 

It would be natural for such a city to bestow un- 
usual care upon the burial of its dead; and that the 
original inhabitants of Timnath-Cheres did so, or, at 
any rate, that they were indeed worshippers of 
Cheres, is witnessed by the Hebrew tradition con- 
cerning the tomb of Joshua; for it was regarded as 
exceptionally worthy of mention, and the rabbins 
relate that upon it was carved a figure of the Sun, 
which they describe, in apt paronomy, asa Temtinath- 
Cheres and characterize as an appropriate reference 
to the Great Captain’s authority even over the Sun, 
as recorded in the Book of Jasher. We may becertain, 
however, that Israel never carved a lemtinath of any- 
thing in the Heaven above or on the Earth beneath, 
or in the waters under the Earth, upon the tomb of 
Jehovah’s champion. It would seem, rather, that, 
as with his greater namesake, ‘‘they made his grave 
with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death”’ 
(Isa. 53: 9), and buried him in the sepulcher of some 
princely devotee of Baal Cheres—or perhaps in the 
Tseriach of Baal Cheres himself. 

This tradition concerning the tomb of Joshua agrees, 
therefore, with the notable sepulchers at Tibneh in 
their witness to the nature of the cult practised at 
Timnath-Serach, or Timnath-Cheres, that it was in- 
deed such as is so aptly characterized in the explana- 
tion of the origin and meanings of the forms of its 
name that suggests itself in connection with the 
kindred name of Nazareth; and their testimony is 
confirmed by that of the almost equally remarkable 


then, that this early apostasy was after the familiar pattern— 
an attempt to assimilate Jehovah to Cheres-Molech. 


42 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


tombs to be seen, as already noted, at Kefar-Cheres, 
a “‘town’’ that was also devoted to Cheres. This 
testimony is still further substantiated by that of a 
third witness, Kerak, with which Kir Cheres, #in-p, 
the Moabite “City of the Burning Sun,” has been 
identified; for it too is exceptional in the character 
and number of its sepulchral caverns.* We would 
accordingly seem to be warranted in the conclusion 
that the original name of Joshua’s city was Timnath- 
Cheres, which signified that it was the “Sacred 
Territory of Cheres-Nergal, the Lord of the Realm 
of the Dead”’; that from this name there was formed 
by metathesis the very apt and suggestive word- 
play Timna(th)-Tserach, ‘‘Place of the Tseriach of 
Baal Cheres,’”’ and ‘‘Region of Sepulture,” or “‘ Place 
of the Grave”’; and that finally this name of ill-omen 
was replaced by the happy equivoke ZJimnath-Serach, 
“Region of Abundance,”’ or ‘‘Boundless Portion.” 
We are warranted also in concluding that these plays 
on the name of the city Joshua chose as his inheritance 
were already long familiar at the time of the Con- 
quest—and the possibility suggests itself that, like 
the mystic Tav, the Cross, with which they are 
marked in both Timnath-Serach and Nazareth, they 
may be echoes, broken and perverted somewhat by 
the Apostasy through which they come to us, of the 
primitive revelation that centered in the Protevangel. 
The History of Religion, like all other earthly his- 
tories, exhibits the interaction of the opposing forces 
of growth and decay. This interaction is abundantly 
seen in the history of Christianity, and it was equally 


* Berkhardt, ‘‘Travels in Syria,” pp. 379-387. For the sug- 
gestion that Kutha also was anciently regarded as possessed of 
special sanctity as a burial place, see Morris Jastrow, Jr., Religz- 
ous Belief in Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 107, 108. 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 43 


evident in the history of the mother cultus, the 
Religion of Israel; and remembering this fact, we may 
expect to find the roots of the truth in the very deepest 
strata of antiquity and some branches, some lingering 
indications of the truth, amid the wild growths and 
the degeneracy of the most perverse paganism. And 
we shall indeed discover that many foreshadowings of 
the promised Seed of the Woman are to be found in 
the ancient cult that gave its prophetic name to the 
chosen city of Joshua, the type of Jesus of Nazareth— 
but we need not be told that they had long lost their 
true significance in all the many versions of this 
ancient apostasy. 

Cheres, the sun-god worshipped at Timnath- Cheres, 
was, as we have seen, the Palestinian equivalent of the 
Babylonian Nergal, the Master of the Realm of the 
Dead, the Burning Sun, the Destroyer, the war-god. 
He is to be identified, therefore, with the Latin Mars, 
“The Bright and Burning One,”’ and the Greek Ares. 
In fact, it would seem that the name of this Greek 
deity, like that of many another member of the Greek 
pantheon, was of Semitic origin, was derived indeed 
from Cheres. The possibility of this identification, 
so far as the names are concerned, is indicated by the 
fact that in the Septuagint (Judg. 8: 13) Cheres, Dvn, 
is transliterated ’Apes, which is the stem of ’Apys. 
Furthermore the name has no certain etymology in 
Greek, and among the Greeks themselves this deity 
was acknowledged to be an importation; and finally 
and conclusively, the characteristics ascribed to Ares 
are those of Cheres- Nergal; ‘‘He is a god of storms, 
a god of light, or a solar god; a chthonian god, one of 
the deities of the subterranean world, who could bring 
prosperity as well as ruin upon men, although in 
time his destructive qualities obscured the others.’’* 

*Encyclop. Britt. 11th Ed., Vol. II, p. 455 0. 


44. ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


Through his divinely appointed place-name, there- 
fore, the Prince of Peace is given the war-gods of the 
greatest of the conquering nations as the supporters 
of his prophetic blazonry; and there is here indeed 
an element of truth that some would like to forget, 
but that the prophets of the Day of Jehovah were 
especially commissioned to emphasize, the truth that 
Jehovah merciful and gracious is also Jehovah of 
Hosts, the Mighty One to avenge as well as the Mighty 
One to save. The Day of the Lord is a Day of 
Wrath—even of the Wrath of the Lamb, who is also 
the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. He is the Prince of 
Peace who came “to bring a sword.’ He is the King 
of Righteousness who will ride forth as a flaming 
warrior for the utter destruction of Evil. He is to be 
the Judge Inexorable. 

Cheres-Ares-Mars-Nergal was, however, as just 
noted, not always nor primarily a destroyer. Even 
among the Romans, ‘Father Mars’’ was originally 
worshipped as a protector of culture against the wild, 
and we may be certain that if the records were such 
as to give us an adequate picture of his cult, or of any 
other cult of the ethnic religions, in prehistoric times, 
it would indeed be recognized as a version of the 
original revelation whose central truth was first 
enunciated in the Protevangel and whose full signif- 
icance is to be seen in the Gospels and in “The Revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ.’’ That this is so is proved con- 
clusively by the providentially opportune recovery of 
just such a picture in the lore of the ancient Euphra- 
tean sun-god Nergal—a picture that has been pre- 
served from the double and age-long perils of perver- 
sion and oblivion most marvelously, whose outlines 
we can see, therefore, almost as clearly as if we were 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 45 


living in those early times, and whose meaning we 
can understand far better, interpreting it now in the 
light of its fuller unfoldings and of the partial fulfil- 
ment of its promises. 

The records in which we find this picture have 
escaped the oblivion of intervening millenniums be- 
cause they were inscribed upon enduring tablets of 
burnt clay (Cheres, wn), and have been hidden in the 
bosom of Mother Earth; and they escaped the previous 
millenniums of devastating apostasy because they were 
enshrined in traditional idiographs and handed down 
in the venerated formularies of a sacred language. 
It is therefore what would seem to be a thoroughly 
trustworthy presentation of the salient features of the 
primitive revelation that is to be found, preserved 
like rock-imbedded fossils, in the old Sumerian 
idiographs of Cheres-Nergal; and not only do these 
formulas of the cult of the Burning Sun present 
characterizations of the Mighty One of whom “the 
sun when he goeth forth in his might’’ is Nature’s 
least inadequate mirror,* but they are even found to 
be exactly the familiar pictures used by Hebrew 
prophet and Christian apocalyptist to tell of Him 
whose significant place-name, “The Nazarene,’”’ was 
first foreshadowed in Timnath-Serach, the anagram- 
matic equivoke of Timnaih-Cheres, ‘Sanctuary of 
Cheres-Nergal,’’ the original name of the city Joshua 
prophetically chose as his portion in Israel. } 

These prophetic word-pictures are in truth such as 
to set before us an almost complete outline of the 
work of the Redeemer, and such especially as to 
distinguish and emphasize his two advents, as does 
the Protevangel. Furthermore, the reference of these 

* Cf. Emanuel Swedenborg, Apocalypse Explained, n. 926, 


46 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


idiographs to the two advents is made indubitable and 
the outlines of their pictures are filled in convincingly 
by two myths—the only myths of the Nergal cult as 
yet recovered—that have come down to us from 
remote antiquity. The first, The Story of Nergal and 
Eresh-Kigal, is one of the treasures of the Tell el 
Amarna Tablets,* which were written in the fourteenth 
century before Christ; while the second, the Dibbara 
Legend, was among the Babylonians regarded with 
as much veneration as was the Torah among the Jews. 
“It was to be taught by the father to the son. The 
scribes were enjoined to teach the story to the people. 
The poets were to make it the subject of their songs, 
and kings and nobles were not exempt from the 
obligation to listen to the tale.’ Like the Law of 
Moses, it was to be written ‘‘on the doorposts of the 
house’’; and accordingly there are in the British 
Museum “‘two specimens of tablets on which a portion 
of the Dibbara Legend is inscribed and which are 
pierced with holes in such a manner as to leave no 
doubt that they were to be hung up in houses.” f 

Many other parallels with the religion of the Bible 
are naturally to be found in the religious traditions 
and practices of the land that nurtured Abraham the 
Father of the Faithful; but it is beyond our province 

* It is worthy of note in this connection that these treasures of 
Tell el Amarna originally belonged to that most remarkable of 
the Pharaohs, Amenophis IV., or as he later called himself, 
Akhen-Aton, ‘‘Venerator of the Sun,” who attempted to do away 
with all the multitudinous cults of polytheistic Egypt and estab- 
lish in their place a monotheism whose only ikon should be the 
solar disk, Aton. His evident regard for this myth of Cheres- 
Nergal is therefore very suggestive. Tutankh-Amen (originally 
Tutankh-Aton), whose magnificent tomb has just been discovered, 
was the apostate son-in-law of this ancient reformer. 

ft Morris Jastrow, Jr., Relig. of Bab. and Assyr., pp. 536, 537- 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 47 


to discuss the whole subject here. Neither is this 
the place to consider the caricature of the Holy 
Family-—afterwards reproduced in the Serapeum of 
Alexandria and in the worship of Babylon the Great— 
that is to be seen in Marduk and Zerpanit and their 
divine son Nabu, for it is very evidently a late de- 
velopment of Babylonian apostasy. The thesis before - 
us calls only for the traces of man’s most ancient 
religious convictions that are to be found, not in the 
Euphratean religion as a whole, but in the cult of 
Cheres-Nergal, to which the prophetic names Tim- 
nath-Serach and ‘Timnath-Cheres directly point. 
And, as we have said, it will be discovered that, 
notwithstanding the later polytheistic disintegration 
of the original sun-symbolism, in which, for instance, 
the royal prerogatives of the Mighty One were more 
specifically assigned to Marduk while Shamash be- 
came more particularly the all-seeing Judge, the 
major features of Messianic prophecy, and especially 
the distinguishing characteristics of the two advents, 
are retained in the lore of Nergal, the Babylonian god 
of the Burning Sun, whom the Western Semites 
called Cheres. 

It is to be observed, however, that all the gods had 
many local names and general titles in the Semitic 
world, and that sometimes these titles and by-names 
were endowed with a quasi-independent personality, 
or even became separate deities. We find accord- 
ingly that, while Nergal was the outstanding name of 
the Burning Sun among the Babylonians and As- 
syrians, he was known also by such names and titles 
as Nin-Girsu and Ninib, and that sometimes these 
names are grouped together in the same text in such 
a way as to suggest that they were different gods. 


48 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


This is especially the case with the name Nzinzb; but 
that Ninib, or rather NIN. IB.—for we have here in 
reality an idiograph whose full meaning and true 
pronunciation are both unknown—was originally a 
title, rather than a name, is indicated by its element 
NIN, ‘‘Lord of,’ and that he was indeed identical 
with Nergal is evident from the fact that some sign- 
groups may represent either the one or the other. 
In fact we have in Nergal-Ninib an illustration of 
one of the processes by which the gods of polytheism 
were multiplied—a process that in this case was never 
completed, for to the end Ninib was never clearly 
differentiated either in characteristics or function 
from Nergal.* The tendency of the differentiation 
was doubtless, as Jensen} maintains, to regard Ninib 
as the Morning Sun and leave the Afternoon Sun as 
the more particular province of Nergal; but Ninib 
never lost the fiery characteristics of Cheres, the 
Burning Sun. His late origin is indicated by the fact 
that, as distinct from Nergal, he was more prominent 
in the Assyrian pantheon than in the Babylonian. 

The following study of the cult of Nergal is of course 
intended to be nothing but a sketch sufficient to set 
forth the original symbolism that ancient apostasy 
perverted into sun-worship, and to reveal its true 
significance as the first unfolding of the promises of 
the Protevangel, in the light of their further unfolding 
in Hebrew prophecy and of their final fulfilment in the 
Sun of Righteousness, who first appeared among men 
as the Prophet of Nazareth (Mmy31)) and who is coming 
again as the King of Glory. 


* Morris Jastrow, Jr., Relig. of Bab. & Assyr., pp. 217, 218. 
German Ed., pp. 227, 228. 
+ P. Jensen, Kosmologie, pp. 457-475. 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 49 


THE FIRST ADVENT OF THE SUN OF 
RIGHTEOUSNESS 


FORESHADOWINGS FULFILLED IN THE NAZARENE 


1. Nergal was known as ?'" BAR. BAR., or 
MASH. MASH. (B.L.* 1846), which is to be rendered: 
Asharedu, *‘The First of All,’”? ‘‘The Supreme.” 
And he who became the Nazarene is called ‘‘the 
beginning of the creation of God”’ (Rev. 3: 14). Of 
him it is said also, ‘In the beginning was the WORD 
and the Word was with God and the Word was God. 
The same was in the beginning with God. All 
things were made through him; and without him was 
not anything made that hath been made. In him 
was life and the life was the light of men’’ (John 1: 
I-4). | 

The features of the sun-symbolism that picture the 
Son of God as Creator were in the later Babylonian 
polytheism assigned to Marduk; but in the older 
mythology all the divine powers collaborate in the 
general work of creation while the creation of mankind 
is attributed to Ea, the personification of the Great 
Deep, who was always regarded as the god of humanity 
above all others—and the god of the Burning Sun, 
Nergal-Ninib, was represented as the first-born son 
of Ea. 

2. Another characterization of Nergal was 
SHISH. GAL. (B.L. 5452), ‘‘ The Elder Brother ”’ 
—and Jesus is ‘‘the first-born among many 
brethern.”” It is of course but an implication that 
we find here of the truth that “‘the Word became flesh 


*B.L. = R. E. Brunnow’s ‘A Classified List of Cuneiform 
Idiographs.’’ 


Dingir 


50 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


and dwelt among us’’; but it could not be expected 
that the incarnation should be any more explicitly 
foreshadowed in these old formulas than it was in 
the words of the Hebrew prophets. 

By this same idiograph, construed as 
URI. GAL., Nergal. is represented also as the 
Urigallu, *‘ The Great High Priest’’—and in Jesus 
‘““we have a Great High Priest who,’ being our Elder 
Brother, is “touched with a feeling of our infirmities” 
(Heb. 4: 14 and 15). 

3. Like the Redeemer, of whose most glorious 
symbol he is the personification, Nergal is represented 
as the offering as well as the priest. Glorious as is 
the sun in his might, it is still an altogether inadequate 
mirror of God intervening in the affairs of Earth. 
Accordingly in the primitive revelation as set forth 
in the picture writing of the stars,* all the heavenly 
hosts were mustered into the service of the truth, 
and with the sun in his ever-circling supervision of the 
life of Earth were associated the planets, his comrades 
on the path of the Eclyptic. The favorite conception 
of the sun and the planets was that of a “shepherd” 
and his ‘‘sheep,’? and red Mars was regarded as 
“the sheep par excellence,’ } which in religious sym- 


Dingir 


* The investigations of W. F. Warren and of Hugo Winckler 
and his disciples, chief among them Alfred Jeremias, have empha- 
sized the fact that astral concepts had a fundamental place in 
the religious thought of the ancients. That the Hebrews shared 
these concepts is witnessed, for instance, by the Zodiacal figures 
in the furnishings and decorations of the temple (Ex. 25: 18 ff; 
26: 1 ff; Ezek. 41: 18 ff; I Kings 7: 23 ff;) and in the Biblical 
theophanies (Ezek. 1: 5 ff; Rev. 4: 6 ff). It was only their 
polytheistic, idolatrous and occult perversionsthat were denounced 
by the prophets. 

+ Morris Jastrow, Jr., Relig. of the Bab. and Assyr., pp. 459, 
460. 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 51 


bolism can only mean the sheep for the altar. This 
conclusion is confirmed by the fact that the ‘‘house’’* 
anciently assigned to Mars as the Zodiacal synonym 
of War in its heroic aspect was the Constellation 
Artes, which in its proper significance is the Little 
Lamb for the Altar. The planets were, however, at 
the same time peculiarly identified with the Sun in- 
its several phases; and, as we have seen, the alter ego 
of Cheres, the “Burning Sun,” was this Ares, or 
Mars, the sheep for the altar. With Nergal-Ninib 
was associated also the planet Saturn, | which, in 
accordance with a feature of the Babylonian as well 
as of the Hebrew ritual and in accordance also with 
the extreme ill-fortune everywhere and always 
attributed to this planet, we may perhaps regard as 
the sheep for Azazel.{ 

4. Of special interest in relation to his worship at 
Kutha and at Timnath-Serach, or Timna(th)-Tserach, 

* To Mars, as to all the planets, were assigned two ‘‘houses.”’ 
War conceived as a destroyer was identified with the Scorpion; 
while the warrior regarded as a sacrificial hero was identified with 
Aries, the Lamb for the Altar. 

+ Muss-Arnolt, Assyrian Dictionary, p. 727. 

t See ‘‘ The Scapegoat’’ in Rogers’ Cuneiform Parallels, p. 196. 
For orig. text, see Dhormein Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archeologie 
Orientale, VIII, pp. 41 ff. The two planets evidently correspond 
to the double function of the god as belonging to both the Upper- 
and the Under-World pantheons, red Mars representing him as 
the god of War and livid Saturn as the Lord of the Realm of the 
Dead, to whom the scape-goat was an offering. That this was 
indeed the significance of Saturn is shown by the fact that the 
two “‘houses’’ he ruled were the constellation of Capricorn, the 
goat-fish, in which was the Gate to the Realm of the Dead, and 
that of Aquarius, who is pictured as sustaining by the stream 
from his urn the Under-World life represented by the Southern 
Fish—See Hastings’ Encyc. of Relig. and Ethics, p. 446 a— 
S. Langdon. 


52 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


‘““The Place of Sepulture’’ of Joshua and the witness 
to his anticipation of ‘‘a Boundless Heritage’’ in the 
better Canaan, is the sign-group, 2?" NE. URU. 
GAL. (B.L. 92030), in which Nergal is represented as 
‘‘The Conqueror of the Grave.” The sign NE., 
which is often rendered ‘Ruler,’’ really pictures the 
foot that treads down, the foot of the conqueror; and 
that Nergal was not conceived as the original Plu- 
tonian “‘Lord of the Great City,” the Realm of the 
Dead, but as having daringly invaded it and overcome 
it, is reflected in The Story of Nergal and Ereshkigal.* 

This is one of the most usual of Nergal’s idiographs, 
and it portrays him in his most characteristic signif- 
icance, and it is either a remarkable example of 
paronomasia or the original form of the name WNergal, 
for which no other etymology has as yet been dis- 
covered. 

5. As we have observed, the temples of Cheres- 
Nergal were naturally suggestive of the realm whose 
conquest was his most glorious exploit. They repre- 
sented Aralu, the vast empire he had wrested from 
fearful Allatu or Evesh- Kigal, which the Babylonians 
often called ‘‘the land from which there is no return,’’ 
the Hebrew Sheol, the Grave. Accordingly his shrine 
at Timnath-Cheres—and so at Nazareth also—was a 
Tseriach, “‘a Sepulchral Chamber’’; and this tomb- 
temple, by a felicitous word-play, even gave a new 
form to the name of the place, Timnath-(T)Serach, 
which at the northern shrine of Cheres became 
(M) Na(th)-Tserach. At Kuthain Babylonia the same 
principle is manifest; for the very name of that ancient 
city became a synonym for the Under-World, and his 


*See R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels, p. 131 ff. Cf. 
Morris Jastrow, Jr., Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 584 ff. 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 53 


famous temple there had the poetically suggestive 
name E. SHID. LAM., ‘‘The House of the Shadow.”’ 

E. SHID. LAM. is therefore the Sumerian equiv- 
alent of the Canaanite Beth-Tseriach; and Muinne- 
Tseriach, ‘‘From the Tomb,” the prophetic equivoke 
of ‘‘Nazarene,’’ m¥30, finds an exact parallel in the 
idiograph, ?”" SHID-LAM-TA. UD-DU-A., * 
in which Nergal as the conqueror of the grave is 
called ‘‘ The One who rises up out of SHID-LAM ”’ 
—out of the ‘‘ Land of the Shadow of Death.”’ 

The same idea is expressed in the name of the “ship”’ 
or ‘‘ark”’ of Nin-Gir-Su, which is the title of the 
sun-god, Ninib-Nergal, as the patron deity of the old 
Sumerian center, Gir-Su or Su-gir7, the Biblical 
Shinar. This ship was called KAR-NUNA-TA. 
UD-DU-A.,+ the ship of ‘‘ Him who rises up out of 
the dungeon of the Deep.” 

These characterizations of Nergal as The First of 
All, as the Elder Brother, as the Great High Priest, 
and as the Conqueror of the Grave, the one who rises 
from the Realm of Shades, unite with the picture 
presented by red Mars of the Sheep for the Altar and 
with the myth preserved in The Story of Nergal and 
Eresh-Kigal, to set forth consistent foreshadowings, 
not of the whole of the First Advent, of course, but 
of such of its features as could be represented in a 
manner that would not be too much out of character 
with the war-god in whose lore they have been 
treasured and handed down. It will be observed, 
however, that these are indeed just the features that 
are of supreme importance; for even the sacrificial 


* TV. Rawlinson, 35, No. 2,1. See Jastrow, Relig. of Bab. and 
Assyr., p. 65. 

¢ Inscriptions of Gudea, D. Col. III. 1-2. Cf. Jastrow, 
Relig. of Bab. and Assyr., p. 654. 


54. 2 ST, MATTHEW'S CLUE 


death of the divine Hero has been unobtrusively but 
unmistakably brought into the picture through red 
Mars. It is foretold by implication also in the story 
of the god’s descent into Aralu, even in the redaction 
that has come down to us; and, as suggested by 
Jastrow,* the analogy of “Tammuz and of the other 
solar deities’’ would lead us to suspect that in the 
original version of the myth “‘Nergal was carried to 
the lower world,’’ a seeming victim of death. The 
elements of humility and helpfulness that are lacking 
in these First Advent foreshadowings are paradoxically 
and purposefully emphasized in the following idio- 
graph, which propounds the primary thesis of the 
Second Advent. 


THE SECOND ADVENT OF THE SUN OF 
RIGHTEOUSNESS 


ITS RELATION TO THE FIRST ADVENT AND ITS 
TWO ASPECTS 


1. The phases of God’s interventions in behalf of 
fallen humanity that find their supreme manifesta- 
tions in the Advents of the Redeemer, first as the 
Suffering Servant and then as the Conquering Hero, 
are set forth in a double construction of the idiograph 
Ding’ MIR. (RA.) (B.L. 958); for this idiograph reads 
both Ardu, ‘‘Servant,’’ and Zzkaru, ‘‘Man, a true 
man, a Hero.”’ 

Ardu, ‘Servant,’ recalls “My Servant The 
BRANCH” (Zech. 3: 8), Tsemech (= Netser), which 
is among the Biblical foreshadowings of the lowly 
Nazarene—and also “The Suffering Servant” portrayed 
by Isaiah. It seems out of place among the epithets 

ig Relig. of Bab. and Assyr., p. 586. | 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 55 


of Nergal, but it becomes entirely consistent when 
we remember that these characterizations were not 
original with the cult of the war-god of Babylon, but 
were taken over from the Great NE. URU. GAL., the 
Sun of Righteousness whose spiritual worship the 
veneration of the Burning Sun supplanted. It is the 
one element underemphasized in the First Advent 
pictures of the war-god’s idiograms; and its indis- 
soluble association here with Zzkaru is aptly sym- 
bolical of the necessary relationship between the 
lowliness and obedience, even unto death, of the 
First Advent and the glorious victory of the Second. 

Zikaru, ‘* The Hero,” is the equivalent of G2bdér, 
the term with which Zephaniah represents God as 
intervening in human affairs, as the “Mighty One’”’ 
of the Day of Jehovah (Zeph. 1: 14 and 3: 17); and 
Nergal was indeed above all others the Mighty One, 
the Hero, of the Euphratean pantheon. His fellow 
deities of the sun were ‘‘heroes,’’ but Nergal was ‘‘the 
great hero.’’* Of course both Zzkaru and Ardu 
belong intrinsically to one advent as much as to the 
other, as does the Hebrew Gzbb6r; but it is not so with 
regard to the outward appearances in which they are 
made manifest. 

The myth that unfolds and makes explicit and in- 
dubitable the Second Advent implications of Zikaru 
is the so-called ‘“‘Dibbara Legend.”’= In this legend 
as we have received it, the hero is represented by this 
very idiogram MIR. (RA.), which some have construed 
as a name, reading it variously Dibbara and Girra, 
but which was, as we have seen, an epithet applied to 

* See ‘‘Gods of the Months,’’ Rogers’ Cuneiform Parallels, 


p. 194. 
t See Morris Jastrow, Jr., Relig. of Bab. and Assyr., pp. 231 
and 528 ff. In his German edition, Jastrow calls the hero Jra. 


56 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


Nergal, ‘‘the hero’’—and he is here portrayed as 
indeed the peerless Hero, the Gibbér, the Mighty One, 
of the Last Great Day. A fearful and unprecedented 
war is to involve all the nations of the earth and to 
continue until— 
‘“‘ After a time thé Akkadian shall come,’’ 
‘‘Overthrow all and conquer all of them.’’ 

The ‘‘Akkadian”’ has here ‘‘to a certain extent the 
character of a Messiah,’”’ as remarked by Jastrow, 
who says further: “It is by no means impossible that 
Hebrew and Christian conceptions of a general war- — 
fare which is to precede the golden age of peace are 
influenced by the Babylonian legend under con- 
sideration.”’* This remark we would amend only 
by pointing beyond the legend to the prophetic un- 
folding of the Protevangel of which it is a polytheistic 
redaction. 

2. It is evident now that Nergal was the god of the 
Under-World because he was a perversion of the sun 
as a symbol of the Sun of Righteousness who is “‘the 
conqueror of the grave,’’ and that he was the god of 
War because he was a perversion of that same symbol 
as in its fiery midsummer might it represents the 
wrath of God destroying the works of unrighteous- 
ness. So in the Dibbara Legend, the Hero is made 
to say: 

“Listen all of you to my words.” 

“Because of sin did I formerly plan evil.” 

““My heart was enraged and I swept peoples away.”’ 

It was therefore as an exponent of righteous judgment 

rather than as a personification of War that the 

Burning Sun was called 7" UGUR., which is 

Iu Namtsare, ‘* The God of the Sword ”—and Jesus, 
* Ibid., p. 533. | 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 57 


“The Captain of our Salvation,’”’ who is Jehovah of 
Hosts incarnate and now glorified, is represented in 
St. John’s picture of his Second Coming as a mighty 
warrior of whom it is said, ‘“‘And the remnant were 
slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, 
which (sword) proceeded out of his mouth”’ (Rev. 
19: 21, cf. Rev. 1:16, etc.). Even in his First Advent - 
Jesus said, ‘‘I came not to send peace but a sword”’ 
(Matt. 10: 34). 

3. The totem and colossus-symbol of Nergal was 
the royal lion, the WNergallu, UR. MACh. (B.L. 
11270), ‘*The Exalted Lion’’—and the Messiah 
finally triumphant is represented as “‘The Lion of 
the Tribe of Judah’’ (Rev. 5: 5), which is, however, 
discovered to be ‘“‘a Little Lamb as it had been slain.”’ 
Just so fiery Nergal-Mars was also “the sheep for 
the altar.” 

4. The two preceding figures, the Sword and the 
Lion, represent the Hero, the Mighty One of the 
Last Day, with relation to his foes, the foes of right- 
eousness. His relation to his own people, on the 
other hand, is represented by the idiograph 2” 
IGI. TUM. (B.L. 9339), which is to be rendered 
"Ahk machri, *‘ He who goes before as a leader and 
guide ’’—And Jesus said: ‘‘In my Father’s house are 
many mansions; if it were not so I would have told 
you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I 
go and prepare a place for you, I come again and will 
receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye 
may be also”’ (John 14: 1-2). 

Notwithstanding all its apostasy, therefore, the 
cult of Cheres-Nergal, the perverted ikon of the Sun 
of Righteousness worshipped at Kutha and Timnath- 
Serach, bears witness to the truths of the primitive 


58 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


revelation, the prophetic unfoldings of the Protevan- 
gel’s promises concerning the wounded but finally 
victorious Seed of the Woman. Little did his ad- 
versaries realize, when they called Jesus of Nazareth 
a “Samaritan’’ (John 8: 48), that they were emphasiz- 
ing the truth already proclaimed in the despised place- 
name of the rejected “‘ Nazarene,’ the truth that in 
him was to be fulfilled all the hopes that are the 
common heritage of humanity but that have been 
so sadly obscured in the perverted mysteries of 
heathenism and apostasy. They called him a “‘Ku- 
thean’’; for, because of the colonists from Kutha 
settled in Samaria by the Assyrians, this was the term 
for ‘‘Samaritan”’ in the Jewish vernacular of that day. 


THE ENEMIES OF THE SUN OF 
RIGHTEOUSNESS 


THE APOSTATE WORSHIPERS OF HIS IKON 


Unfortunately in its very apostasy the cult of 
Cheres- Nergal bears witness also, prophetic witness, 
to a fatal tendency in fallen humanity that has mani- 
fested itself in countless defections from the truth all 
through the ages, and that has reached its culmination 
in the Great Apostasy that the New Testament 
apocalypse calls Babylon the Great. In order that 
there may be no doubt about this final application 
of the prophetic type, the consummate apostates 
whom St. John describes as worshippers of the Beast 
are characterized, as we shall see, in the Hid Treasures 
of Zephaniah (Part II., Chap. X., Sixth Prophecy) as 
““worshippers of Saturn’’—which identifies them un- 
mistakably as the antitypes of the devotees of Cheres- 
Nergal; for, as already noted, pallid Saturn,* equally 

* See Muss-Arnolt, Assyrian Dictionary, p. 727. 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 59 


with the Burning Sun and bloody Mars, was wor- 
shipped as hisikon. And it is evident that these two 
planets aptly suggest the double réle of the God of 
War and King of the Realm of the Dead assigned him 
in the apostasy. Saturn in the later redactions of the 
mythology is associated with Ninzb; but, as already 
noted, the sign-group NIN. IB. originally represented ° 
Nergal, and the god Ninib never ceased to be a full 
equivalent of Cheres, the western god of the Burning 
Sun. ‘‘Worshippers of Saturn”’ is therefore an un- 
mistakably suggestive term for apostasy; and the 
prophet Amos mentions Sikkut-Melek-kem, ‘‘ Ninib- 
Nergal their King,” and Kaiwan-tsalmé-kem, “their 
Saturn-images,’’ which pictured ‘“‘the star of their 
god,”’ as the root of offending also in the final apostasy 
of the northern tribes of Israel (Amos 5: 26). 

How fearful the ancient apostasy represented by 
child-devouring Saturn really was, becomes evident 
when it is observed that Cheres-Saturn was none other 
than Molech,* the abomination of the Valley of 
Hinnom—a worthy type of the abominations of the 
Great Harlot. This shines out clearly in the passage 
just quoted from Amos, in which Ninib-Nergal is 
called Melek-kem, ‘“‘their King’’; for Moloch, or 
Molech, usually written with the article, is a title 
rather than a name, and, as universally recognized, 
is in reality The Melek, the ‘‘King,’’ the vowels of 
the later Jewish pronunciation of the word in this 
association representing the frequent Kert, or sub- 
stitute reading, Bosheth, ‘“‘The Shameful Thing.” 
The title has here, however, almost the force of a 
name; it always connotes that horror of horrors, the 


* See Encyc. Brit., 11th Ed., Vol. XVIII., p. 677 a, and the 
New Schaff-Herzog, Vol. VII., pp. 449, 451. 


60 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


sacrifice of children by fire; and the opinion is general 
that such offerings among the people of Jehovah, 
newcomers as they were in Canaan, were always 
reversions to the worship, the propitiation, of the 
original Baal of the land (Cf. Deut. 12:29 ff.). Now 
the supreme deities of the Phoenicians and Canaanites 
and of the surrounding peoples were with few ex- 
ceptions sun-gods of very similar characteristics; 
and it is very evident that the fiery exacter of these 
immolations was also a sun-god—and which shall he 
be but that dreaded destroyer and Lord of the Realm 
of the Dead, Cheres, the god of the Burning Sun, of 
“bloody’’ Mars, and of the baleful planet Saturn? 
With this conclusion agrees the universal testimony of 
the Greeks, who identified Moloch with Chronos, or 
Saturn; and it is further substantiated by the story 
of the desperate expedient of Mesha, King of Moab. 
The local name or title of the supreme deity of Moab 
was Chemosh, but in the name of the father of Mesha 
we find the combination Chemosh-Melek, while the 
name of his great fortress is given as Kir-Cheres— 
-and it was upon the wall of this fortress that Mesha 
offered up his eldest son ‘‘for a burnt offering’’ to his 
god (2 Kings 3: 27). According to some texts of the 
Septuagint, which read Moloch instead of Malcham 
in Zeph. I: 5, it was against this same apostasy, 
brazenly associating itself even with the worship of 
Jehovah, that Zephaniah lifted his voice in vehement 
protest, citing the threatenings of the broken covenant; 
and the indications are that the shameful rites of 
Cheres-Saturn-Molech were indeed recrudescent in 
Jerusalem at that time (Cf. Jer. 19: 5; 32: 35; and 
Ezek. 23: 38 ff.). 

It is of course easy to see that for those who desired 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 61 


them in those days of general spiritual declension 
among the people of Jehovah, there were not lacking 
in the externals of religious institutionalism, of cere- 
monial and symbol, of song and story, and even of 
dogma, plausible though specious excuses for this 
association of Moloch-worship with the worship of 
Jehovah; for it becomes more and more evident that - 
there were many parallels between the religion of 
Israel and the sun-cults of their neighbors and of the 
land of their origin; and, as we have just seen, these 
parallels are especially complete, far more complete 
indeed than could have been supposed, with the cults 
of Cheres-Nergal-Ninib, the cults of the Burning Sun 
and the planets Mars and Saturn. No one today, 
however, can fail to recognize the absolute contrast 
between them in the inner life that determined their 
historic development. 

It is very clear, therefore, that the religion of Israel 
had a common origin with the faiths of the peoples 
about them—a common origin, we doubt not, with 
all the Ethnic religions—in the once universal revela- 
tion, whose characteristic rudimentary promise is 
found in the Protevangel; but it is equally clear that, 
while on the one hand the Ethnic religions, all of them, 
in differing degrees and in many directions—least 
offensively among the Persians (thinking now only 
of the world as known to the Hebrews) and most 
grievously in the Saturn-Molech worship of ancient 
Canaan—wandered irretrievably from the only proper 
path of development of the primitive promise, the 
religion of Israel, on the other hand, though it was 
often betrayed by kindred impulses and dangerously 
beset by the example of the surrounding apostasies, 
was kept, but only by dint of providential interven- 


62 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


tions and frequent discipline and prunings the most 
severe, sufficiently near to the right line of religious, 
moral and spiritual development to enable it to furnish 
in due season the modicum of human cooperation 
necessary to the Gospel’s fulfilment of the first half 
of the Protevangel’s promise. 

Alas, how completely ancient history has repeated 
itself in the records of the Christian Centuries! The 
Prophet of Nazareth is still largely rejected, not only 
by “his own’’ who “received him not”’ in the days of 
his flesh, but by many also who call themselves by 
his name but receive not his spirit. Many indeed 
are the modern “‘worshippers of Saturn,’ many and 
various, from the ultrarationalistic exalters of nature 
in its most materialistic manifestations to the ob- 
scurantist devotees of perverted and superstitious 
traditions. But Divine Providence is still intervening 
as of old; and, preparing the way now for an adequate 
reception of the Mighty One returning to initiate the 
fulfilment of the second half of the Protevangel’s 
promise, brings to light opportunely this long-lost 
prophecy of the name of Joshua of Timnath-Serach, 
or Timnath-Cheres, with its manifold revelations that 
point to Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Savior of 
the World. 


3. THE REST THAT REMAINETH FOR THE PEOPLE OF 
GoD—AND THE RIGHTEOUS REMNANT THROUGH 
WHOM THE JOSHUA OF THE NEW COVENANT 
WILL TAKE POSSESSION OF IT IN 
BEHALF OF HUMANITY 
(Cf. Rev. 14: 1 ff.) 


The relationship between the place-names of Jesus 
and Joshua has led us to assume that Nazareth like 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 63 


Timnath-Serach was devoted to the worship of the 
Sheol-conquering sun-god Cheres, the Palestinian 
equivalent of Nergal, the “‘Lion”’ and the ‘Elder 
Brother,’’ and in accordance with this assumption, 
we find that ancient Nazareth seems to have shared 
the characteristic peculiarity common to places de- 
voted to the worship of the Lord of the Under-World 
—Timnath-Cheres, Kefar-Cheres and Kir-Cheres— 
unusual care in the burial of the dead; for there can 
be little doubt that this was the original purpose of 
the extraordinary artificial caves excavated in the 
limestone spur that juts out from the eastern mountain 
wall and occupies the central place in the valley of 
Nazareth. Like Joshua’s city, it was therefore a 
T1|mnath-Tserach, “‘A Place of Sepulture,’’ and this 
is the form of the name that has survived in connection 
with this northern shrine of Cheres; but, as we shall 
see, 7z]mnath-Cheres and T1|mnath Serach, the two 
other forms that the analogy of the name as applied 
to the sister city and the consistency of its local 
evolution demand, have left indubitable traces in the 
sacred records. 

That Nazareth was sometimes called JTumnath- 
Serach, or Mnath-Serach, is evidenced by the fact that 
it is actually mentioned in the scriptures by the latter 
half of this form of its name, which is its essential 
element. Nazareth is undoubtedly the largest town 
on the borders of Zebulon, and its location and en- 
vironment are such as to have invited settlement from 
the earliest times. It ought therefore to be found as 
the principal landmark in the boundaries of the 
territory of Zebulon as set forth in Israel’s doomsday 
book—and it is indeed so recorded in Josh. 19: 10-12, 
but in a fashion that only too truly reflects its peculiar- 


64 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


ities and its proverbial standing in the community. 
It was evidently among the cities from which the 
original Canaanite inhabitants were never driven out; 
and so in the ancient records its protean and elusive 
name, which did not live like that of the more southerly 
shrine of Cheres in the hearts of Hebrew citizens, 
easily lost both form and identity. That the un- 
certainty about the name of the principal land-mark 
of Zebulon is of very long standing is evident from 
its exceedingly various renderings in the Greek 
translations of the Bible: Zap6.5, Daperd, DedSoun, VeddovxX 
and ’Ecebexywra. In the present Hebrew text it is 
written TY, Sarid, a form that still suggests Tseriach, 
and that was perhaps chosen from among the variants 
represented in the Septuagint under the influence of 
the fact that Served (written both Deped and Laped in 
the Septuagint, and also Zedex in Lucian’s version) 
was the name of the eldest son of Zebulon. In all 
these variants the relationship to Serach, nnd or MY, 
is unmistakable. In all of them the initial ‘‘S”’ is 
retained with one or the other of the two remaining 
radicals; and the clerical error involved in each case— 
for the Septuagint was written after the introduction 
of the Hebrew square character—is either an easily 
understood confusion between 4 and 5, or an equally 
facile Japsus in writing tforn. Taken together Sarid 
(WY and Laped) and Sedduch (Zeddovx) leave little 
room for doubt that Serach, mw, or, as suggested by 
Dapb.6, with the Canaanite suffix -eth, Seracheth, nm, 
representing T1|mnath-Serach-eth, was the name in 
the original autograph of this passage. 

Lacking the key of the analogy of Timnath-Serach, 
and not knowing the true spelling of Nazareth, 
scholars have of course not been able heretofore to 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 65 


identify Sarid with Nazareth; but they have not failed 
to note that the context indicates the immediate 
vicinity of Nazareth as its location. For instance, 
Knobel thought it designated ‘merely the southern 
opening of the deep and narrow wady that comes 
down from the basin of Nazareth,” while Keil sug- 
gested that it was represented by ‘‘one of the two 
heaps of ruins on the south side of the Mount of 
Precipitation.’’* 

The reference to Nazareth wherein it is called by 
the happy equivoke with which Joshua transformed 
the name of his chosen portion in Israel from a sugges- 
tion that it was to be the “Place of his Burial’’ into 
a prophecy of his boundless and eternal portion in 
the Heavenly Canaan is found, therefore, in exactly 
the place that is most appropriate—in Israel’s dooms- 
day book, which fixes the meets and bounds of the 
possessions of the Chosen People in the Earthly 
Promised Land, where it is mentioned as the pivotal 
landmark in the boundaries of the tribe of Zebulon, 
whose prophetic name means ‘“‘Habitation.’’ It was 
to be the earthly habitation of the Joshua of the New 
Covenant, who is to lead a ‘* Righteous Remnant,’’ 
as suggested by Sarid (=) and Seddouk (=p"y) 
—for we are dealing, it must be remembered, not 
with simple exegesis but with the ENIGMA of the 
Lost Prophecy —to the final reclamation of human- 
ity, of which a prophetic type is to be found in the 
postexilic redemption of Nazareth from Canaanite 
apostasy, and a harbinger in Sarid emended to 
(Mnath)-Serach. 

Finally, as we shall see, the form of the name that 
reveals Nazareth as at one time a shrine of the 

* See McClintock and Strong, “‘Sarid.”’ 


66 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


sun-god Cheres-Nergal-Saturn, will be found in an 
exceedingly suggestive equivoke that characterizes 
this type of earth-life as at that time the lair of the 
spoilers, in the picturesque story of Israel’s first Battle 
of Armageddon, the typical victory that delivered 
the people of Jehovah from the recrudescent domi- 
nance of the apostate Canaanites; and it is significant 
that the Spirit of Prophecy, speaking through the 
lips of Deborah, calls the victors in that typical 
contest by the very name to which the errors of the 
scribes have assimilated Serach, for she sings, ‘Then 
came down the remnant (7) of the nobles and the 
people; Jehovah came down for me against the 


mighty ’’ (Judges 5: 13). 


4. A FORESHADOWING OF THE FINAL ARMAGEDDON 
THAT 1S AT LAsT TO DELIVER THE CHURCH 
FROM ALL THE OPPRESSIONS OF THE 
WORSHIPPERS OF SATURN 


Closely following the passage in the Book of Judges 
in which Joshua’s City, Timnath-Serach, is called 
Timnath-Cheres, Nazareth, or (Mnath)-Serach-eth, 
nm, is called “(Mnath)-Charish-oth (n-w7n) or 
Charis-oth (n-win) of the Gentiles’’ (Judges 4: 2 etc.). 
It must be remembered in this connection that in the 
old unpointed text Sim and Shin were not discrimi- 
nated, and that even in some modern Lexicons they 
are not treated as distinct letters. The pronunciation 
of this name is naturally of uncertain tradition. The 
English versions follow the Masoretic pointing, and 
transcribe it “‘ Harosheth of the Gentiles’’; but the 
Septuagint rendering, which we follow here, is 
*Aptowd Tta&v eOvav. 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 67 


No site but that of Nazareth will harmonize with 
the implications concerning Charts[h oth of the Gentiles, 
in the story of Israel’s first Battle of Armageddon 
(Judg. 4 and 5 and Ps. 83:9 and 10). Tell Cherithiya 
“on the south bank of the lower Kishon,”’ with which, 
so far as the names are concerned, Charis[h]oth may . 
be most plausibly identified,* is nevertheless alto- 
gether impossible, and so is El Cherithiya on the 
opposite bank; for the implication that Sisera’s 
stronghold was at some distance from the Kishon is 
unmistakable in the promise given to Barak through 
Deborah, “I will draw unto thee to the river Kishon, 
Sisera, the Captain of Jabin’s Army with his chariots 
and his multitude; and I will deliver him into thy 
hand”’ (Judg. 4: 7); and in agreement with this im- 
plication, as well as in accordance with the promise, 
is the later description of Sisera’s hosts as “gathered 
together”? “‘from (j) Charis|hloth of the Gentiles 
unto (5x) the river Kishon” (Judg. 4:13). From 
either of the Cherithiyas unto the river Kishon, would 
mean nothing, for they are directly on the banks of 
the river; but from Nazareth unto the river Kishon— 
the north branch of the river, anciently regarded as 
the main stream, passing Nazareth at a distance of 
several miles—corresponds with the implication of 
the narrative, and also stages the battle intelligibly. 
Sisera’s nine hundred chariots could here be deployed 
on open ground; and here, as nowhere else, with its 
right flank protected by the river and its left by the 
hills of Zebulon, his challenging battle-array, as we 
would expect and as is indicated in the story (Judg. 
4:14 and cf. 5: 15), could be drawn up in full view of 


*See W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, Vol. II., pp. 
213-224. 


68 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


Barak on Mt. Tabor. Furthermore the issue of the 
contest was determined on the meadows in front of 
En Dor (Ps. 83: to- Eng.), which are about equi- 
distant from the initial positions of the two armies—if 
Charis[h]oth is the same as Nazareth. Here, it 
would seem, a sudden equinoctial storm transformed 
the rich soil into the worst of mud and turned the 
chief assets of the Canaanites, their chariots of iron, 
into hopeless liabilities—for ‘‘the stars in their 
courses fought against Sisera’’ (Judg. 5: 20), “‘the 
Earth trembled and the heavens dropped, yea the 
clouds dropped water”’ (Judg. 5: 4). 

The turn in the tide of battle evidently found Barak 
holding his enemy’s line of retreat; for the defeated 
captain fled eastward and northward on foot to the 
tent of Jael near Kadesh, while his army turned south- 
ward along the western edge of Little Harmon and 
then took the Great Central Highway that led over 
the upper fords of the left branch of the Kishon to 
the Canaanitish city of Taanach (Judg. 5:19). Here 
they doubtless expected to find a safe refuge; but their 
hopes were deceived, and turning westward they 
followed the road along the left bank of the river to 
Megiddo—only to find the gates of this Canaanitish 
city closed against them also. Sisera’s host was now 
indeed upon the direct road to Tell Cherithiya; but 
if this place was his headquarters and had been for 
twenty years, it is difficult to see why Sisera did not 
try to escape in that direction with his army. Fur- 
thermore, if it had been to Tell Cherithiya that they 
were retreating, the Canaanites having once gotten 
to the southern side of the river would have been in 
comparative safety both from their foe and from the 
hostile flood—for certainly, if either Cherithiya had 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 69 


been the lair of these marauders for so many years, 
the stronghold on the opposite bank of the river 
would have been in their possession also and there 
would have been no occasion for them to attempt to 
cross the river at Megiddo. Thomson’s idea that 
they were caught by the overflowing flood in a narrow . 
pass between the ordinary bank of the river and the 
cliffs of Carmel is not in accordance with the Bible 
narrative, which says that “Barak pursued after the 
chariots and after the host, unto Harosheth of the 
Gentiles’’ (Judg. 4: 16). | 

The Song of Deborah makes it clear, however, that, 
not only at the fords near Taanach but also at Megid- 
do, “the River Kishon swept them away’”’ (Judg. 5: 
19-21); and the only possible explanation is that at 
the fords near Megiddo they attempted to cross the 
now swollen and raging torrent and follow the road 
that leads across the plain to Nazareth, where the 
few that escaped the Kishon fell into the hands of 
Barak, so that ‘‘there was not one man left.’’ Clearly 
Barak had wisely maintained his hold upon the 
Canaanites’ lines of communication; and, instead of 
pursuing them across the rising stream, had followed 
along its northern bank and left the disorganized foe 
to be harried and driven on by the aroused country- 
side south of the river. And that the tribesmen of 
the neighboring regions, though they had not joined 
Deborah and Barak on Mt. Tabor, were nevertheless 
mobilized, and came up, all save the inhabitants of 
Meroz, ‘‘to the help of the Lord against the mighty ”’ 
in time to be of material assistance, is the testimony 
of Deborah, who, while her highest praises are re- 
served for Zebulon and Naphtali, makes honorable 
mention also of Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh— 


70 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


represented by Machir—and more especially of 
Issachar, who dwelt on the banks of the Kishon 
(Judes 214515, 18,123). 

Commanding, as we have seen, all the highways of 
Esdraelon, one of the great crossroads of ancient 
commerce, the north and south central highway of 
Palestine as well as the east and west caravan route 
from Egypt to Babylon, and so with easy communica- 
tions in all directions, and yet high up among the 
hills and protected by a mountain wall, Nazareth 
was the ideal headquarters for Jabin’s marauding 
minions, who, as is evident from the bitter taunt of 
Deborah’s song (Judg. 5: 6 and 19), had been ac- 
customed to levying “gain of money ’”’ at the fords of 
Taanach and Megiddo, where at last they paid such a 
toll to Death. The Cherithiyas, on the other hand, 
are off at one corner of the plain and could not directly 
command even the Egypt-Babylon caravan route, 
which had an alternative course through the Plain of 
Dothan. Moreover we would expect to find Jabin’s 
chief border fortress on the north or home side of both 
the treacherous river and the open plain, in fact 
secured exactly as it would be at Nazareth on the 
edge of the friendly hills; for it was among the northern 
fastnesses of these same hills that his capital Hazor 
was situated—and that his tyranny as a direct 
oppressor of Israel, however far his exactions as a 
tribute gatherer might extend, was confined to the 
regions of Galilee is evident from the relative lack of 
enthusiasm for the war among the other tribes as 
compared with Zebulon, Naphtali and Issachar. 
That his authority as the leader of the Canaanitish 
confederation was confined to this same region and 
had the Kishon as its southern boundary is indicated 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY ek 


by the fact that the Canaanite towns of Taanach 
and Megiddo on the further edge of the plain did not 
open their gates to his fleeing army. Every cir- 
cumstance, therefore, points toward Nazareth as the 
site of Sisera’s stronghold. 

The name “ Charis-oth [or Chartsh-oth| of the 
Gentiles’’ is in keeping, so far as its qualifying phrase © 
is concerned, with all that we know about the city 
from which Nathaniel and his people would not at 
first believe that the Messiah could possibly come; 
and these equivokes are just such twists of the name 
of the city as the occasion would call forth among the 
Semites of those times. For twenty years, hidden 
behind its mountain wall, Nazareth had been the 
rendezvous of a Canaanitish confederation that had 
“mightily oppressed the children of Israel,’’ and so 
on their lips—or at least in the pages of their historian 
—|Mnath|-Serach-eth reverted to what, according to 
the analogy of the name of Joshua’s city, was its 
original form as the name of a heathen shrine. 

With a purposeful and exceedingly effective aspira- 
tion of Sin into Shin, which, as we have noted, were 
not discriminated in the unpointed text, and with a 
play also upon the Canaanitish termination -eth, the 
name becomes—as indicated by the Septuagint 
rendering ’Apiow t&v ’eAvv, which is far older than 
the Masoretic pointing—" [Mnath]-Charishoth (nw n) 
of the Goim,” which, with Charishoth referred to IV. 
won,* may be rendered ‘‘ The Place of the Sorceries of 
the Heathen.”’ 

A more direct word-play,f however, and one that 

* Cf. Isa. 3: 3; and the Arab fem. form noted by Brown- 
Driver-Briggs, p. 361 0. 

+ As we have seen, the double word-play here is dependent 
upon the double function of the unpointed letter ¥. It appeals, 


Ta ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


specifically identifies the fearful apostasy against 
which Deborah rose up as a ‘“‘mother in Israel,”’ and 
that reveals its full significance as a prophetic type, 
is found in the reading [Mnath]-Charisoth (nen) 
hag-goim, “‘The Place of the Burnings of the 
Heathen.”? This construction is in harmony with the 
assumption that Nazareth was devoted to the worship 
of Cheres-Molech and answers the requirement of 
symbolic consistency that the first Battle of Ar- 
mageddon should picture the overthrow of the base 
counterfeit that has always sought to supplant the 
religion of Jehovah. 

The verb Charas, DN or Win, is regarded as obsolete. 
We have seen valid reasons nevertheless for the 
assurance that it meant “‘to burn’’; and the derivative 
Charisoth, used here in the appropriate sense of 
“Burnt Offerings to Cheres-Molech,” is found with 
the same meaning in two other equally apt word- 
plays, one of them used twice. The first of these 
word-plays is found in Kir Charisoth, the twist given 
the name of Kir Cheres, the Moabite stronghold, 
in the story of King Mesha’s horrible sacrifice on its 
wall (2 Kings 3: 25), and in Isaiah’s picture of the 
doom of Moab (Isa. 16: 7), where the prophet dwells 
sarcastically upon the lamentations of the Moabites, 
mourning “for the raisin-cakes of Kir-Charisoth’’— 
for the sacrificial feasts (Cf. Hos. 3: 1) in connection 
with the burnt offerings of their children. The same 
play on Cheres would explain the Kethibh, Sha‘ar 
Charisoth, mp in ayy (Jer. 19: 2), which records 
Jeremiah’s pronunciation of the name of the gate of 
therefore, to the eye rather than to the ear; and so must be 


credited to the author of the book rather than to the actors in 
the story. 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 73 


Jerusalem that opened toward the Valley of Hinnom. 
The true name of this gate, as both the Masorites and 
the Septuagint indicate, was Sha‘ar Charesith, moan 
“yw, ‘‘The Rubbish Gate’’; but here in his denuncia- 
tion of the apostasy that sought to identify the worship 
of Jehovah with the cult of the Burning Sun, Jeremiah 
by a strikingly effective paronomasia made it mean 
“The Gate of the Burnt Offerings of Cheres-Molech”’ 
—for this was the gate by which the apostates led 
forth their little ones to be sacrificed. 

These renderings of the name of Sisera’s lair add 
new force to the peculiar phrase, “‘ of the Gentiles,’’ * 
found associated with it, and they also sound the very 
keynote of the patriotism of Deborah and Barak; for 
even more than an uprising against political and 
material oppression, the war they waged was in behalf 
of the religion of Jehovah and against the encroach- 
ments of the abominations of the Canaanites and the 
attempted restoration of the ancient apostasy of the 
land. ‘‘They chose new gods, then was war in the 
gates’’ (Judg. 5: 8) is the explanation given by 
Deborah; and her pean of victory closes in exultant 
harmony with it, “So let all thine enemies perish, 
O Jehovah; but let those that love him be as the sun 
when he goeth forth in his might” (Judg. 5: 31). 

Note the word-play and antithesis suggested in 
these last words of Deborah’s song; for ‘‘the sun .. . 
in his might”’ is exactly Cheres, which in the spiritual 
monotheism of Israel, the legitimate successor of the 
earlier revelations, was still an unperverted type of 
the Sun of Righteousness, a symbol of the Mighty 

* This phrase and Esedekgola (p. 64) suggest that, to distin- 


guish it from Joshua’s city, Nazareth was known as ‘‘(Mnath-) 
Serach [or Cheres] of Galilee of the Gentiles.” 


74 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


Hero, who was to destroy the power of the Evil One, 
the Nazarene, of whom Joshua of Timnath-Cheres, 
or Timnath-Serach, was the great prophetic type; 
while the equivokes, Charishoth, twisted and plural and 
signifying ‘‘sorceries,’’ and Charisoth, referring to the 
abominable sacrifices to Molech, pictured the riotous 
and degenerate idolatry of the vanquished Canaanites, 
and furnished apocalyptic symbols of the apostasy 
that is the consummate work of the Evil One, and of 
which the typical example was furnished by those 
ancient worshippers of Cheres-Nergal-Molech-Saturn. 
It is evident that this first Battle of Armageddon, 
in which Deborah and Barak and the hosts of Israel, 
aided by the raging river and the stars in their courses, 
overthrew Jabin and Sisera, the champions of that 
earlier apostasy, foreshadows the final Armageddon 
of which the Voice of the Day of Jehovah and all the 
voices of prophecy give warning. 


5. THe TypicAL HERO AND HIS PROPHETIC NAME 
IN FuLtt—A COMPLETE FORESHADOWING. 


The radical identity of the names of Nazareth and 
Timnath-Serach has now been abundantly sub- 
stantiated; and we see that in his place-name as 
exactly and fully as in his personal name and in his 
work, Joshua the Son of Nun of Timnath-Serach, the 
Savior of Ancient Israel, and the scourge of the 
apostasy of the Canaanites, foreshadowed Jesus of 
Nazareth, the Judge of all the Earth and the Savior 
of the World. Not only so, but even his clan-name, 
ben Joseph, was likewise appropriately contributory 
to his high calling as the central figure in a picture 
that was both historic and prophetic, and that was 


FORESHADOWINGS IN HEBREW HISTORY 75 


designed to serve as one of the credentials of his great 
antitype; for it was as “The Son of Joseph” that 
Jesus was enrolled in the household of Israel (Matt. 
I: 16; 2:4, etc.). Furthermore it was only putatively 
that Joshua could be called The Son of Joseph, for it 
was not by nature but in accordance with the law of | 
the partriarchal blessing of Jacob (Gen. 46: 20; 48: 5, 
13-20) that the Prince of Ephraim had precedence 
over the Prince of Manasseh as the Chief of the House 
of Joseph. 

It is worth while to note in this connection the care 
and the completeness with which a suggestive parallel 
has been established between the name of this Son 
of Joseph and the name of him who was called Jesus 
of Nazareth. He too was (1) putatively The Son of 
Joseph; and he is also, (2) as we shall see, metaphori- 
cally “‘The Son of Nun’’; (3) the name of the future 
conqueror of Canaan was changed by Moses from 
Hoshea, yw, to JSehoshua, or Joshua, ywwin—from 
“Salvation’”’ to “Jehovah is Salvation’’; (4) Joshua 
himself chose as his portion in Israel a place with the 
versatile and prophetic name of Timnath-Serach; 
(5) a suggestion of the peculiar oracular quality of 
this name is preserved in a parallel passage that gives 
us the form, Zumnath-Cheres; (6) ‘‘Nazarene’’ is 
darkly foreshadowed as a name of the Messiah by the 
prophet Isaiah, who calls him a Netser, 23, ‘‘A Little 
Branch’’; (7) this name is fully and specifically foretold 
by the prophet Zephaniah in a passage than which 
none could be more appropriate for the purpose; 
(8) the Angel of the Annunciation directed the Virgin | 
Mary to name her son JESUS (Luke 1: 31); (9) the 
angel that appeared to Joseph gave him the same in- 
junction (Matt. 1: 21); (10) the Holy Family, intend- 


76 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


ing to return from Egypt to Bethlehem, were by 
divine intervention turned aside to Nazareth; (11) the 
Evangelist Levi-Matthew recorded this last fact, and 
added—to the great discomfort of the apologists, 
but to the final discomfiture of their gainsayers—the 
annotation, “that it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken through the prophets that he should be called 
a Nazarene’’; and now (12), summoned to the witness 
stand in this Great Day, Joshua bin Nun ben Joseph 
of Timnath-Serach puts the seal of prediction exactly 
fulfilled upon the Joshua of the New Covenant. 

This prophetic witness of the great leader who was 
the flower of the tribe of Joseph is itself foreshadowed 
in the blessings pronounced upon the tribe by the pa- 
triarch Jacob (Gen. 49:22-28). Indeed so evidently 
Messianic in their implications are these blessings that 
some Jews have tried to find in them the promise 
of a second Messiah, the Messiah ben Joseph, to whom 
they might assign the roll of the Devoted Shepherd, 
the Suffering Servant. But the fact that these pre- 
dictions of the patriarch were to be fulfilled, not in 
one who was himself to be a Messiah, but ina hero 
who was to be a type of the Lord’s Anointed and whose 
very name was to be prophetic of his transcendent 
Prototype, is unmistakably suggested. He was to be 
made strong “by the hands of the Mighty One of 
Jacob, BY THE NAME of the Shepherd the Stone of 
Israel’? (Gen. 49:24, R. V. Marg. Cf. Isa. 40:11; Zech. 
13:7; Gen. 28:22; and John 1:51). 


IV 


ECHOES IN CHURCH HISTORY 


THE SIGN OF THE SON OF NUN AND ITS COUNTERFEIT 
BY THE FATHER OF LIES 


HE mission of the Angel of the Annunciation with 
the specific injunction, “‘Thou shalt call his 
name Jesus (or Joshua), for it is he that shall 

save his people from their sins’’ (Matt. 1: 21, 25; 
Luke 1: 31; 2: 21), has always been accepted as serving 
notice upon us that the name of him who lead Israel 
of old into their Earthly Promised Land—typical of 
the rest that remaineth for the people of God (Heb. 
4: 8-9)—was designed to play no unimportant rdéle 
in Messianic prophecy, and this so much the more 
clearly in view of the fact that the Spirit of Prophecy, 
speaking through Moses, had been careful to change 
the name of the typical Savior of ancient Israel from 
Hoshea to Joshua (Num. 13: 16). Heretofore, how- 
ever, we have had no reason to suppose that the 
prophetic significance extended any further than the 
personal name of Joshua the Son of Nun of Timnath- 
Serach; but now we have discovered that his place- 
name was also prophetic, foreshadowing the place- 
name of his great antitype, and that the care exercised 
to insure the desired correspondence between type and 
antitype with regard to these place-names was exactly 
parallel to that bestowed upon the personal names. 
The suggestion is insistent, therefore, that we should 
enquire whether the patronymic of Joshua the Son 
77 


78 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


of Nun of Timnath-Serach might not be found equally 
oracular with the rest of his name. In fact it is 
impossible to believe that the Spirit of Prophecy could 
fail to observe the law of analogy so evidently appli- 
cable here; it is unthinkable that He should make such 
appropriate and effective use of the personal name 
and the place-name of the human type of the divine 
Redeemer and neglect the golden opportunity offered 
by his patronymic; and indeed we shall find that, 
in accordance with a well-known usage of the East— 
exemplified, for instance, in the assumption by the 
false messiah whose pretensions brought the Roman 
Exile in its last full measure upon his people of the 
suggestive title Bar Cocheba, “Son of the Star’’— 
Jesus of Nazareth is in very truth a “Son of Nun.” 
Nun is his “Star,” it is his “Sign,” it is in fact and 
in the fullest sense of the term his patronymic sym- 
bolically presented; and it cooperates with his place- 
name to set forth the revelation so long reserved, 
hidden until the Day for which it was intended, to 
which St. Matthew’s clue has in due season led the 
way. 

For the interpretation of this figurative patronymic, 
Divine Providence has ordained that the symbol it 
uses should have the place of honor as the earliest 
token in the insignia of the Church, a token that sug- 
gested both of its two characteristic sacraments, the 
initial rite of Baptism and the memorial ordinance of 
the Lord’s Supper. It presents also the only truly 
Christian form of the sacred monogram and of that 
prehistoric emblem, the cross. It was the token that 
guarded the outer doors of the early Church from the 
secret minions of Caesar, and it is a sign in which is 
declared the truth that must guard the inner doors of 


ECHOES IN CHURCH HISTORY 79 


the Church in all ages—it is the Sign and Seal of the 
Christian. Thecharacter Nun, our N, the fourteenth 
letter of the Hebrew alphabet, pictures a fish; and 
its name is the Old Semitic term for ‘‘fish,’’ which 
recurs also in New Hebrew—and, as every student of 
Church History knows, it was the fish-token that | 
gave admittance to Christian fellowship in those 
early days of persecution. We shall see later that 
there are indeed meanings and applications appropri- 
ate to the symbolism to be found in the Hebrew fish- 
word Dag. 35, or Dagah, 1%, as well asin the Semitic 
fish-letter Nun; but for the Greek-speaking* Church 
of the first centuries of our era the significance of the 
emblem was primarily found in the Greek fish-word 
Ichthus, *Ix6ts.¢ In this fish-word every Christian 
of those times would read the confession, *Incods 
Xptatds O.od Tids Zwrnp, ** Jesus the Christ the Son of 
God our Savior.” 

Significant indeed, therefore, and in line with the 
oracles of his personal name and his place-name, is 
the patronymic of Joshua of Timnath-Serach, the 
Son of Nun, the Savior of Ancient Israel and the 
prophetic type of the Savior of the world, for by its 
suggestion that Jesus of Nazareth must also be in 
some sense in accordance with Semitic usage a “‘Son 
of Nun,” it presents and confirms the Christian’s 
historic confession of faith in him as the ‘Son of 
God’’—and we shall see that it presents him also as 
the “Son of Man”’ in all the historic relations of 
his humanity. 

The name of the letter Nun agrees, even in its 


* As Paul’s Letter to the Romans indicates and as the in- 
scriptions in the Catacombs prove, even the early Church at 
Rome spoke Greek rather than Latin. 

+ Cf. Bennett’s Christian Archaeology, pp. 77-82. 


80 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


primary meaning, with its use as a symbol of Christ; 
for it is derived from the verb Nén, }\3 or 3, which 
means “‘to propagate or increase’’—and his is the 
Quickening Spirit that gives “power to become sons 
of God to them that believe on his name’’ (John 
1:12). Thecorresponding noun Nin, }'), is translated 
simply ‘‘Son”’ in our versions, but it is always associ- 
ated with Neked, 323, ‘‘Son’s Son.”’ It is in fact the 
Son who is himself to become the succeeding head of 
the family—and he is the ‘‘Only begotten of the 
Father,’ the ‘‘First-born among many bretheren,”’ 
the ‘Second Adam,” the Head of the New Humanity 
through whom we also become ‘“‘heirs of God and 
joint heirs with Jesus Christ our Elder Brother.” 
With the incarnation there begins a new phase of 
the world’s redemption. Before that event, the 
preparation for it had involved division, elimination, 
and election—the Saving of Noah, the Call of Abra- 
ham, the “‘Election’’ of Jacob, on the one hand; and 
the ‘‘Preterition’’ of all the non-elect on the other. 
This involves no implications, of course, with regard 
to either the salvation or the ‘‘reprobation’’ of the 
individuals ‘passed over’’—and neither does St. 
Paul’s argument in the Nineth of Romans. That 
God “loved Jacob” and ‘hated Esau’”’ is merely a 
picturesque putting of the fact that Israel and not 
Edom gave promise of furnishing the higher type of 
national, social and religious life that God was seeking 
to develop as the necessary matrix of the Messianic 
hope. This process of division, of elimination and 
election reached its consummation in the birth of the 
ideal man, the ‘‘Son of God” and the “‘Seed of the 
woman,’ who initiated the final ‘‘mutation”’ of the 
life of Earth—participated in “by faith’? in the 


ECHOES IN CHURCH HISTORY SI 


times before—by which, through the new birth from 
above, the whole of humanity may become partakers 
of the divine nature. With Jesus, accordingly, there 
enters the process of multiplication of which Nun is 
the symbol and for which the division, the elimina- 
tion and election of the preceding dispensation had . 
been a preparation—the multiplication of the life 
of the Son of God in twice-born men. There is there- 
fore no longer any “election’’ that depends upon 
eugenics according to the flesh (John 1: 13)—though 
that eugenics must indeed be increasingly regarded 
as an essential factor of social growth in grace—but 
now God “commandeth all men everywhere to 
repent.” The call is to all, the race may be entered 
by all, and the prize may be won by all. The only 
“election ’’ now is the call to special service in herald- 
ing the Glad Tidings, which comes both to individuals 
(1 Cor. 12: 28) and to groups, nations, races (Luke 
24: 47). From Jerusalem the call went forth pro- 
gressively to the diaspora, to the Gentiles of the Greek 
and Roman World, to the races of Europe; and now 
at last, after over twelve centuries of preparation in 
the ‘‘wilderness’’ (Rev. 12: 14), it is going forth to 
all the Earth and to the whole of humanity—for to 
every son and daughter of Adam must come in due 
season the opportunity to make his calling and 
election sure. 

Glorious indeed, therefore, is the hope wrapped up in 
the fish-symbol of the Early Church, the promise of 
the multiplication in dying humanity—in all who will 
receive it—of the divine and immortal life of “‘Jesus 
the Christ the Son of God our Savior’ through faith 
in his name, for even the dead shall hear his voice 
and come forth to his righteous judgment; and we shall 


82 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


see in the following chapter that this same symbolism 
bears witness to the equally essential work of this 
mighty Savior as the destroyer of the evil that has 
made his great salvation necessary, and that continu- 
ing would make even it of no effect. 

We will find too that it is no merely curious coinci- 
dence that the name of the constellation with which 
the fortunes of Israel were anciently associated is also 
“The Fishes ’’— Pisces, the largest but the least con- 
spicuous constellation of the Zodiac, to which, as we 
shall see, the oracle of the Lost Prophecy itself refers, 
indicating it by the Hebrew fish-word Dagah ns. 

This Hebrew word for fish, and the more usual form 
Dag, are also from a root that means “to multiply, 
to increase’’; and a play on its spelling somewhat 
after the analogy of that on the spelling of Ichthus, 
one that is indeed self-enouncing, gives us Daleth- 
Gemiul, or Gemilah, which represents the work of the 
Son of Man in its twofold aspect under an apt and 
familiar figure; for Daleth is ‘‘Door,’’ and Gemiél or 
Gemilah is “treatment just such as one ought to 
receive, whether of reward or of retribution’’—and 
he is the Door of Reward to the justified, and the 
Door of Retribution to the finally impenitent (Cf. 
Jer. 51: 56; and John 10: 1-2). For the early Chris- 
tians, both Jew and Gentile therefore, the picture of a 
fish, or an equivalent symbol, was a suggestive “‘Sign 
of Christ’? and an appropriate countersign at the 
door of the Church. It was a token suggestive both 
of the initiatory sacrament of Baptism and of the 
memorial sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, with which 
it is frequently found associated in early Christian 
remains.* Its confession of faith is indeed the ‘‘rock”’ 


* See Bennett’s Christian Archaeology, pp. 79-83; and Hastings’ 
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. XII., p. 136. 


ECHOES IN CHURCH HISTORY 83 


on which the Savior declared he would build his 
Church as a temporal institution (Matt. 16: 18), just 
as he himself is the “‘Rock’’ on which is founded its 
eternal hope; and this is the truth that the Beloved 
Disciple made the central theme of all his writings, 
and that in his epistles he recommends as the touch- , 
stone of Christian fellowship. In fact St. John ex- 
plicitly and repeatedly affirms that any denial of this 
truth is the identifying mark of Antichrist (1 John 
2 Edr2a) hs 25.53 TO). | 

This is the Nun that was rejected by the Rabbins 
and that, restored to the text of Zephaniah, discloses 
in the Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah the Lost 
Prophecy that St. Matthew has been accused of 
allowing his enthusiasm to invent—a prophecy that 
now, reinforced by the foreshadowings of the place- 
name of the first Joshua, clinches with unexpected 
corroboration his argument that Jesus of Nazareth 
was indeed the Joshua of the New Covenant, the 
Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah foretold by 
the prophets. The suggestion is inevitable, there- 
fore, that Resh, the letter that supplanted Nun in 
Zephaniah’s oracle and that thereby obscured the 
Proclamation of the Voice of the Day of Jehovah, 
the prediction that most specifically identifies the 
Christ with the Prophet of Nazareth, must indeed 
be the symbol of Antichrist, the token of that most 
deadly of all errors, the denial of the power and 
authority of him on whom our Salvation depends, 
the denial of the reality of the incarnation of the 
Spirit of Life in the First-born among many brethren, 
whether it take the form of a denial of the reality of 
his divinity or of his humanity—and the Great 
Apostasy is in effect a denial of both. 


84 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


The Church as a whole has never been long de- 
ceived by overt and palpable manifestations of either 
of these cardinal errors—that of the Gnostics on the 
one hand and that of the Alogot and the Arians on 
the other—but St. John earnestly bids us beware of 
those hidden workings of the same spirit of Antichrist 
that lead men to confess Christ Jesus with the lips 
while they deny him in the heart and in the life 
(1 John 2:4 ff., 15 ff.;3:4 ff., etc.) ;and these practical 
denials of his divinity and authority and power, on 
the one hand, and of the reality of his human nature 
and the sufficiency of his human sympathy on the 
other—both of which are denials of the divine hu- 
manity in which alone is the possibility of Salvation 
and eternal life—have in varying degrees and propor- 
tions been sadly evident in the Church of all ages and 
of all places and denominations. The type and chief, 
the supreme ‘‘head,” of them all, however—and 
therefore the special application of Resh—is to be 
seen in the denial of Christ by an appeal to the 
practices of the world, the substitution for his Spirit 
in the Church itself, in its activities and government, 
of the spirit of the world, even of the world at its 
worst, the spirit dominant in the great exploiting 
despotisms characterized by the Word of God as 
“‘wild-beasts.’’ This is that great apostasy, predicted 
by the Apocalyptist of the New Testament, through 
which the Bride of Christ, the New Jerusalem, has 
been supplanted in the house of the Church, its ex- 
terior organization, by Babylon the Great, the Mother 
of the harlots and of the abominations of the Earth. 
And as it practically denies the divine power and 
authority of the Son of God, our Savior, by its appeal 
to the methods of the World, and its worship of the 


ECHOES IN CHURCH HISTORY 85 


ideal of absolute and ruthless Empire, so this same 
Apostasy denies in effect the reality of his human 
nature, the sufficiency of the sympathy of our Great 
High Priest, for it places its main reliance on the 
mother-heart of the ‘““Queen of Heaven”’ and calls in 
besides the intercession of the multitudes of its 
deified saints. 

That this is indeed the significance of Resh, that it 
does in fact identify the Great Apostasy, the over- 
reaching enmity of the Evil One has left no doubt— 
for God makes even the wrath of Satan to praise him. 
As it supplanted Nun in Minnatserach, mmy3o, the 
Hebrew cryptogram of the name of the Messiah, so 
it did also in the Greek monogram of Jesus Christ, 
and in such a way as not only to reveal its own origin 
but also to put the mark of his identity upon the head 
of that consummate disguise of the Old Serpent, the 
Dragon in the clothing of the Lamb, against which 
the oracles of God give particular warning. 

The equivalent of Nun in the Greek-speaking 
Christian Church was the picture of a fish, or some- 
times of two fishes, representing the letter as its name 
is spelled in Hebrew, }\3, “‘ Fish and Fish’’—a duplica- 
tion that is also appropriate as suggesting the fish- 
constellation Pzsces, which pictures two fishes tied 
together. In early Christian art the two fishes are 
frequently found crossed, and it would seem that it is 
as an equivalent of this form of the emblem that the 
primitive Swastika ® must be construed in its 
Christian use, for it is readily seen to be the crossing 
of two N’s or Nuns in a very ancient as well as a 
finally persisting form of that letter. The most 
suggestive form of the fish-symbol was however the 
abbreviation of the word ’Iy6is, its first two letters, 


86 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


written as a monogram, *—which is also the 
monogram of Jesus Christ, and which is besides the 
only purely Christian form of the CROSS, the only 
form of that prehistoric emblem that has no perverted 
or unhallowed associations. 

In process of time this, the true and original, sacred 
monogram was obscured.* In harmony with the 
ever more and more prevailing tendency toward con- 
formity to the world and its institutions and cults, 
it was assimilated to the ancient mystic symbol X&, 
which is found on pre-Christian coins and on monu- 
ments to heathen deities; and, in the form ¢ , it was 
assimilated also to the well-known Crux Ansata, the 
symbol of life in the religion of Egypt.t Both of these 
forms were construed as Cihi-Rho, the monogram of 
Xpictos or Christ, which with seeming innocence has 
taken the place of the monogram of Jesus Christ 
and is now indeed the symbol meant when one speaks 
of “the Sacred Monogram.” It is, however, in 
reality the emblem of imperialism; for it is Constan- 
tine’s Cross, the standard of the Caesars, and the 
successor and equivalent of the predatory Eagles 
of Rome. 

Constantine’s Cross is only too true to history in its 
symbolism—only too faithful in its picture of the 
deceptive alliance of the Church and the Empire. 
The beautiful curve that transformed Jota into Rho 
seemed, no doubt, to the Christians of that day not 
only harmless but even advantageous. Chi-Rho, ¥, 
seemed even more distinctly the monogram of Christ 
than Jota-Cht, %, and so indeed altogether dis- 
placed it; but this intrusion of the letter “‘R’’ into 


* See Bennett’s Christian Archaeology, pp. 84 and 87. 
t See McClintock and Strong, Vol. VI., p. 506. 


ECHOES IN CHURCH HISTORY 87 


the monogram obliterated all reference to the fish- 
word Ichthus with its confession of faith in the Savior 
—Resh supplanted Nun as completely in the historic 
token of the Church as it had in MiNaTSaRaCh its 
prophetic symbol; and as the standard of the Church- 
Empire the perverted monogram became altogether 
what it doubtless suggested to the pagan officers of’ 
Constantine’s army, the standard of the Emperor as 
Pontifex Maximus, the labrum surmounted by a 
serpent*—for indeed both Resh and its Greek equiva- 
lent Rho are very suggestive of the conventional 
figure of the curving neck and head of a serpent. 
Furthermore, when this emblem is thought of as a 
‘“Cross’’—and so it is called—and when its inter- 
loping ‘‘R’’ is identified with the supplanting Resh of 
the Lost Prophecy, it is no longer the Greek monogram 
of Christ at all, the dissimulated appearance of the 
Lamb is betrayed by the voice of the Dragon, and 
it is revealed in its true character as the significant 
Hebrew letters Tav-Resh, a CROSS, Tav, exalting 
Resh, the initial of ROME (a) and the “Head”’ 
of the Serpent; for the letter Tav is both in figure and 
name a ‘‘Cross Mark,” while the letter Resh pictures a 
“head ”’ and its name is a by-form of Rosh, the Hebrew 
word for ‘‘head’’ and the term also for the ‘venom 
of the serpent.’’ It is indeed the ‘‘Mark Resh’’— 
the Symbol of the Serpent and the Mark of ROME, 
the last and greatest and most fearful of the Apoc- 
alyptic beasts. 


* So Ammianus Marcellinus, Book XVI., Chap. 12, as quoted 
by A. Hislop, The Two Babylons, pp. 389, 512. 


V 


THE END OF THE CLUE 


THE First MEssIANIC PROPHECY—ITS FINAL FULFIL- 
MENT FORESHADOWED IN THE RECOVERY OF 
THE Lost PROPHECY 


T. MATTHEW’S reference to prophecies that the 
Christ “should be called a Nazarene”’ was in 
his own mind simply for the purpose of proving 

from the Scriptures that Jesus of Nazareth was the 
promised Messiah; but we see now that there was in 
the mind of the Spirit a further purpose of more ex- 
plicit corroboration and fuller revelation unsuspected 
by the writer whom he inspired, a purpose that made 
use of the evangelist’s seeming misstatement to afford 
in the fullness of time a clue to the recovery of this 
oracle of Zephaniah, which was to be lost for a season. 
Truly the name of the prophet is itself a prophecy: 
‘Jehovah hides, preserves, treasures up.”’ 
“‘Deep in unfathomable mines 
Of never failing skill, 

He treasures up his bright designs 

And works his sovereign will.” 

The name of the evangelist, who is called both 
Matthew and Levt, is equally significant in this connec- 
tion. Matthew, as is well known, means “The gift 
of Jehovah,” while Levi, 15, may be regarded as derived 
from III. "5 and rendered ‘‘Garland” or ‘‘Wreath ”— 
anything “‘twined,” and therefore a “clew”’; and it is 
entirely in harmony with this idea that in Gen. 29: 34 

88 


THE END OF THE CLUE 89 


it is explained as derived from I. 5, RCT JOIN ia tO 
unite,’ and as given to the first Levi, the third son of 
Jacob and Leah, because it was hoped he would 
prove to be a bond of reunion between his estranged 
parents—and this is a meaning appropriate also to the 
priestly function of his tribe in the Household of 
Israel. Just so St. Matthew’s much derided reference © 
to seemingly imaginary predictions of the despised 
name ‘‘Nazarene” is a “‘bond of reunion’’ between 
these Lost Prophecies and their rightful place among 
the treasures of the Church, and has become the 
“‘clue”’ to their recovery. Accordingly Levi-Matihew, 
the union of the old Jewish and the new Christian 
names of the evangelist through whom this “‘clew”’ 
and ‘‘bond of reunion’’ comes to us, is found to be, 
like those of Joshua and Zephaniah, most appropri- 
ately prophetic, “A clue is given by Jehovah’’; 
and the opprobrium so long cast upon the name of 
this one-time publican (redXwvns = Tedos + *wvéomac) 
because of his supposed blunder with regard to these 
prophecies has purchased (wvéopar) the accomplishment 
(rédos) of the hidden purposes of God. 
‘*Blind unbelief is sure to err, 
And scan his work in vain; 
God is his own interpreter 
And he will make it plain.” 
And we shall indeed find in the recovered Proclamation 
of the Voice of the Day of Jehovah and in the timeli- 
ness of its message for this perplexed and lowering day 
abundant justification of its age-long obscuration to 
the seeming discredit of the first of the Gospels. 
St. Matthew’s clue has led us to the Hid Treasures 
of Zephaniah, and we have also found an unsuspected 
wealth of meaning and of prophetic suggestion in the 


90 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


place-name of Joshua the Son of Nun of Timnath- 
Serach, and in his patronymic as well; but the clue 
still leads on—the message and its authentication are 
not yet complete. The very loss and recovery of the 
Oracle of the Voice that heralds the Last Day—the 
erasure, first of Nun} and then of the Resh that 
supplanted it—are found to be freighted with pro- 
phetic import. The discovery of the symbolic 
character of these letters awakes in them an un- 
mistakable echo of the first Messianic prophecy, an 
echo that seems, like the Voice of the Day of Jehovah 
itself, to be a harbinger of the speedy coming of the 
Mighty One and of the fulfilment of the promise of 
restoration implied in the divine pronouncement as 
the gates of Eden were closing behind our first parents. 

It is by a very obvious word-play that Rosh, Ws, 
the ‘‘head’’ of the Serpent, becomes the letter Resh, 
which pictures a ‘‘head’”’ and whose name is a by-form 
of Rosh—which is also a term for the venom of the 
serpent. Soalso‘Akeb, 3py, which is translated “‘ heel” 
in the English versions of the Protevangel (Gen. 
3: 15), may be rendered “mark” or “sign.” This 
is one of its ordinary meanings in both Arabic and 
Aramaic, and the extant usage indicates that this was 
one of its meanings in Hebrew also—it is, for instance, 
the ‘“‘foot-print,”’ the ‘mark,’ by which one is tracked 
by his enemies (Ps. 56: 7 and 89: 52); and it is found 
for ‘‘token’’ in the Hebrew rendering of Ecclus. 
13: 26. In this ancient prophecy, therefore, ‘Akeb, 
the ‘‘foot-print,’’ the ‘‘mark,’’ the “‘sign,”’ of the Seed 
of the Woman, readily suggests the letter Nun, the 
Hebrew fish-letter, which we have found to be synon- 
ymous with the Greek fish-word Ichthus, the ‘‘token”’ 
of the Church and the ‘“‘sign”’ of Christ. | 


THE END OF THE CLUE Of 


These word-plays are further exemplified and con- 
firmed in the version of the Protevangel preserved in 
the picture-writing of the stars, to which we shall 
have occasion to refer in the fifth and sixth chapters 
of Part II., following. There Resh, the Head of the 
Serpent, is found to have been represented by Aries, 
the ‘‘Ram,” the ‘‘Prince of the Signs,’”’ the ‘‘Leader — 
of the Year,’’ regarded as the Head of the Zodiac in 
its malign aspect or, in other words, as under the 
dominance of its southern or infernal paranatellon, 
the Head of Cetus, the Dragon of the Deep; while 
Nun, the Hebrew fish-letter, which we have found to 
be, like the Greek fish-word Ichihus, a token of the 
Church and the sign of Christ, was represented by 
the last constellation of the Zodiac, its ‘‘heel,’” the 
fish-constellation Pisces, in its beneficent aspect, or 
regarded as under the dominanee of its northern or 
supernal paranatellon, Andromeda, the maiden whom 
the dragon would devour—but whose chains are now 
to be broken—and whose “‘feet’’ anciently marked 
the end of the circle of the months, as did the ‘‘head”’ 
of Cetus its beginning. Moreover that Pisces was 
indeed anciently thought of as the “‘heel’’ of that 
most important figure of the heavens, the Zodiac, 
while Aries was conceived as its “‘head,”’ is reflected 
in the fact that even in our almanacs today these 
parts of the human body are pictured as traditionally 
under the influence of the Fishes and the Ram re- 
spectively; and it is significant that ‘Ekeb, “‘heel,’’ 
is still the Arabic term for the end of the month. 
Finally, this ‘Heel’? (‘Ekeb, apy) of the Zodiac is 
known to have been associated of old with the fortunes 
of the Children of Israel—it was the constellation of 
Jacob (2p), who was given his name because at their 


92 ST. MATTHEW'S CLUE 


birth he significantly laid hold of the ‘‘heel”’ of his 
twin brother Esau, whom he afterward “supplanted ” 
(apy). 

The perfect complement of these word-plays upon 
its emphatic substantives is found in Si#ph, bid, the 
verb of this pronouncement of the Protevangel. The 
primary meaning of this verb is “to grind’’—so in 
the cognate languages, and so in Gen. 3:15, @, and in 
Ex. 32: 20 Targum. Thence come the secondary 
meanings, (1) “‘to abraid, wound or bruise’’—so in 
Gen. 3: 15 0; and (2) ‘‘to rub off, to render invisible, 
to erase’’—so in Job 9:17 and Ps. 139: 11, and so also 
in Gen. 3: 15 in the paronomasia.* 

The words addressed to the serpent in Gen. 3: I5 
may therefore be construed in two different but en- 
tirely equivalent ways: (1) simply and naturally 
in accordance with the literal story as traditionally 
rendered and invested with an allegorical and pro- 
phetic significance, ‘‘He shall grind (or bruise) thy 
head, and thou shalt wound (or bruise) his heel’’; 
and (2) by a paronomasia that discloses a parable of 
the enmity of the Father of Lies to the Living Word 
in his inveterate hostility to the Written Word, 
‘‘ He shall erase thy Resh, and thou shalt erase his 
Nun ’’—a corollary of the Protevangel that furnishes 
the key to the full import both of the Ichthus sign, 
the true sacred monogram, and of its counterfeit, 
the Cross of Constantine; and that also confirms their 
identification of the great apocalyptic figures of the 
Book of Revelation with a parallel symbolism of 
which we have already seen, in some measure, the 
unique force and suggestiveness. And We shall find 


*For the data here adduced, see Brown-Driver-Briggs sub 
voce, Pp. 1,003 a. 


THE END OF THE CLUE 93 


in the Book of Zephaniah—and also on the scroll of 
the heavens—such applications of this symbolism as 
will be altogether worthy of the tribute to its signif- 
icance implied in its use in the patronymic of that 
peerless type of the Savior, Joshua the Son of Nun of 
Timnath-Serach. Indeed by this symbolism, as we . 
now perceive, Jesus of Nazareth, the metaphorical 
‘Son of Nun’ and the putative “Son of Joseph,” is 
directly identified, not only as the “Christ the Son 
of God our Savior,’ but also as the Son of the Virgin 
in whom is to be recognized the consummate appli- 
cation of the Protevangel’s prophecies concerning the 
Seed of the Woman. 

St. Matthew’s clue has now been followed back to 
the very beginning of Messianic prophecy; and it has 
disclosed the Lost Prophecy in two very dissimilar but 
closely related unfoldings of that first promise. One 
of these, the prophetic name of the greatest of the 
types of the Nazarene, has indeed been found to con- 
tain an altogether unsuspected wealth of revelation, 
and it has provided us with just the suggestions we 
need for the decipherment of the other. We can now 
proceed, therefore, to read the naturally fuller and far 
more explict message of the Lost Prophecy as it is 
found in the Hid Treasures of Zephaniah. 





PART II 


THE HID-TREASURES 
OF ZEPHANIAH 


MIDS 





VI 


THE PROPHET AND HIS NEW BOOK 


HERE have been many methods of searching 
the Sacred Scriptures, but the Bible itself 
asks only to be read like any other literature— 

to be interpreted, in other words, by the Rule of 
Reason. A true application of this rule, however, 
must determine its premises from the origins, methods 
and goals of the work in hand; and so it will not forget 
that the Spirit of Prophecy as well as the human 
author is to be considered in the interpretation of 
these scriptures, and that, therefore, on the one hand, 
only such constructions and applications as are in 
harmony with the consensus of prophecy are to be 
admitted—‘“‘for no prophecy of scripture is of any 
suigenerous interpretation’’ (II. Peter 1: 20), while, 
on the other hand, no such construction or application 
is to be rejected merely because it is beyond the pur- 
view of the human author and his times. 

For, though the inspiration of these scriptures is no 
isolated phenomenon and can not be regarded as un- 
related to the strivings of the Holy Spirit with all 
men of all times and all places, it must nevertheless 
be construed in the light of the fact that, sifted and 
treasured and assembled by Divine Providence in 
cooperation with human appreciation, they are the 
surviving scriptures of the choice spirits of the Peculiar 
People who were in covenant relations with God and 
who prepared the way for the coming of Him who was 
“the express image of the Godhead bodily,’’ who was 

97 


98 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


the first perfect union of the divine and the human 
and the long expected earnest of the final and multi- 
plied revelation of the Heavenly Father in his earthly 
children—the surviving scriptures likewise of those 
who, in the estimation of the Household of Faith, 
under the guidance of the promised Paraclete, had 
caught the clearest vision of our Elder Brother and 
had become most fully conformed to his spirit and 
imbued with his life. We credit them, therefore, asa 
whole and severally and in each constituent element, 
both as to their original composition and as to what- 
ever redactions may have brought them to their 
present form, with such a degree of inspiration in each 
case as is entirely sufficient for the divine purpose 
involved—and also with a concomitant measure of 
divine providence in their transmission down the 
ages. For, on the assumption that these scriptures 
are indeed thus preeminently inspired by the Spirit 
of Truth in furtherance and interpretation of the 
mission, unapproachably supreme, intrusted to a. 
series of Chosen Peoples, central among whom were 
the Sons of Abraham who collaborated with Him in 
writing them, the Rule of Reason demands that we 
regard them, just as we have been led to do, as con- 
stituting one book, The Bzble, a unity from Genesis 
to Revelation in the unfolding of its one Grand 
Theme. The Rule of Reason demands furthermore 
that we interpret this book in accordance with its 
own precept and example—as illustrated in the 
quotations from the Old Testament found in the New, 
and as set forth explicitly by our Lord himself and 
by his apostles: “‘ Ye search the scriptures, for in them 
ye think ye have eternal life; and these are they which 
bear witness of me’’ (John 5: 39); “and beginning 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK 99 


from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted 
to them in all the scriptures the things concerning 
himself’’ (Luke 24: 27); ‘‘Moses indeed said, A 
Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up from among 
your brethren, like unto me. ... Yea and all the 
prophets from Samuel and them that follow after, 
as many as have spoken, they also told of these days”’ 
(Acts 3: 22, 24). In truth so fully dedicated to this 
one all-absorbing theme is the Bible that all the strik- 
ing personalities, institutions, and events described in 
its pages are utilized as types and shadows to carry 
the burden of its unsearchable riches; for “these 
things happened to them by way of example (Marg. 
= figure; Greek = rirou, var., rurixds); and they were 
written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the 
ages are come”’ (I. Cor. 10: II). 

Of these principles the New Book of Zephaniah is 
an outstanding illustration and confirmation. It 
comes to us from the remote past in such a way as 
could be made possible only by the cooperation of a 
divine inspiration and a divine providence that extend, 
where need requires, to the very “jot and tittle”’ of 
the text; its readings and applications form a con- 
sistent and finished whole that is in absolute accord- 
ance with the consensus of prophecy; and its predic- 
tions, hidden so long and so securely, are found to 
tally circumstantially with the facts of history so far 
as they have developed. 

There is here, however, no implication that the 
whole body of sacred scriptures was likewise written 
under the direction of an inspiration that extended to 
the very letter, but just the contrary; for the Book of 
Zephaniah as it is now disclosed is the superlative of 
its kind, and required a corresponding degree of the 


I0O HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


divine agency in its composition—and the reasons 
for this character of the book and this quality of its 
inspiration are not far to seek. The efficient cause is 
to be sought of course in the divine purposes as now 
revealed in the book itself; but a contributing cause 
is to be seen in the capabilities and the sympathetic 
cooperation of the human author who was chosen and 
named and prepared in accordance with those pur- 
poses; while the occasion is to be found in the excep- 
tional and significant character of the times, which, 
in the first place, made such a revelation just then 
eminently appropriate to the purposes in hand and, 
in the second place, helped to make it possible through 
the reaction upon the prophet and his friends that 
attuned them to the mind of God. For the human 
author is here, as everywhere and always, not only a 
prophet of God to the extent of his real soul-affinity 
for the elements of the good, the beautiful.and the 
true involved in his work, but also, more or less, in 
accordance with the same Law of Sympathy, a repre- 
sentative of our common humanity, an exponent of 
his own times, his own people, his own cultus, and 
the spokesman especially of the circle of friends with 
whom he was most closely associated and whose ideas 
and aspirations he shared. 

Zephaniah wrote at the time of the great though 
seemingly futile reformation that followed the recovery 
of what was probably the long-lost and forgotten 
autograph copy of the Mosaic Covenant in the days of 
Josiah. The nation as a whole was indeed far gone in 
apostasy, but there was a remnant, a coterie of the 
meek of the land, that kept the ordinances and sought 
righteousness (Zeph. 2: 3), a party of progress that 
were insulated from the contamination of the general 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK lor 


apostasy by their active and uncompromising hostility 
to it—among them, the good king Josiah, Hilkiah 
the high-priest, Huldah the prophetess, and the 
three prophets Jeremiah, Habakkuk and Zephaniah. 
To the moral earnestness of this great reformation 
there was added an undercurrent of foreboding that 
it could not allay, a growing conviction of the fearful — 
imminence of the greatest crisis in the history of the 
nation; and the spiritual exaltation that lifted the 
minds and hearts of the true Israel of that day into 
trustful confidence in the graciousness of the ultimate 
purposes of Jehovah, however dark might be the more 
immediate manifestations of his providence, is natura- 
Ily reflected in the preeminence, each in his own 
field, of the three literary prophets who are their 
spokesmen. 

Of Jeremiah, “‘Appointed of Jehovah,” acknowl- 
edged to be the greatest of all the seers of Judah, save 
possibly one, the statesman inspired for the times and 
the Prophet of the New Covenant, nothing further 
need be said; while Habakkuk has always been 
recognized as unexcelled in the artistry as well as in 
the native sublimity of the short but diversified 
theodicy with which he “gathered in his arms”’ the 
bewildered faith of the wandering sheep of the House 
of Israel; and now it is seen that Zephaniah, the 
Prophet of the Last Day, was in some respects even 
more wonderfully responsive to the divine purpose. 
It was his to reveal the final consummation, dimly 
but sufficiently to the needs of his own generation, 
and fully and circumstantially to the greater needs 
of the time of the end—even according to the oracle 
of his name. 

The name Zephaniah, 358, has been held to indi- 


102 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


cate, as St. Jerome puts it, both the speculam and the 
arcanum of God—a paradox that aptly characterizes 
the work of the prophet. The first interpretation 
was suggested by the transcription of the name 
sometimes found in the Septuagint and always used 
in the Vulgate, Zogovias, or Sophonias. It derives 
the element Sophon, jb¥=)e¥y—1D¥, from the verb 
Tsaphah, nbs, ‘to watch’’—and indeed the prophet 
takes his text from the sanctions of the Mosaic 
Covenant and warns Jerusalem that “Jehovah is 
keeping watch’’ over its fulfilment. Regarding the 
name, however, as a portrait of the prophet himself, 
this derivation pictures him as the “Watchman of 
Jehovah’”’; and in truth we may think of him as stand- 
ing upon the central watchtower of the ages and 
looking out in both directions over the whole Highway 
of Salvation. The Book of Zephaniah was written 
at the middle point of the Seven Millenniums covered 
by Bible history and prophecy* and contains a con- 
spectus of the whole course of their major events. 
Moreover it is intimately interwoven, as it were, with 
the fabric of the ages of which it tells. It not only 
utilized events that had gone before, but it con- 
fidently depended also upon the distant future for 
contributions that were most vital to its purposes. 
Written, as we have just said, at the middle point of 
the Seven Days of the Re-creation of the World, it 
sets forth the wonders of the Last Great Day in the 
light of the Revelation given at the beginning; it 
calls to its assistance the threatenings of the Mosaic 
Covenant and the promises of the typical name and 
work of Joshua the Son of Nun of Timnath-Serach 
from the Seventh Century previous, and from still 
* See Part II., Chap. XI, Sec. I., ist note. 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK 103 


more ancient times (c. 3100 B.C., the times of Enoch?) 
the confirmation of the Apocalypse of the Stars; and 
then, moving in reverse symmetry upon the same 
rhythm of Seven, it trusts with justified assurance 
to the Seventh Century after it was written and sealed 
and hidden for St. Matthew’s Clue and the token of 
the Ichihus sign, and to the close of the Seven Times © 
of the Gentiles for its interpretation and open publi- 
cation.* 

All this is only contributory, however, to the work- 
ing-out of the grand design foreshadowed in the 
alternative and simpler construction of the prophet’s 
name to which we have already referred: that on the 
eve of the Last Great Day, of which he has always 
been regarded as peculiarly the prophet, his prophecy 
should unfold a message summing up the whole 
course of the interventions of the Mighty One in our 
behalf and focusing the whole of the Word of God 


*This is no ‘‘mechanical conception’’ of history. The 
“Doctrine of the Ages’’ here assumed—and confirmed—implies 
no other than the gladly accepted ‘‘determinism’’ of seed-time 
and harvest in which Free-agency finds its opportunity—the 
determinism of the laws of human development, according to 
which ideas and institutions as well as germs have their periods 
of incubation, growth and decay. As for the precise delimita- 
tions of prophetic eras, it is conceivable that manipulators of the 
markets might make the rhythm of our Black Fridays exact in- 
stead of merely approximate. And that Divine Providence does 
indeed shepherd the natural development of historic events so 
as to conform them to the artificial patterns by which the ful- 
filments of prophecy are to be recognized is the implication of 
the purpose clauses—*‘that it might be fulfilled,”—introducing 
the Scripture citations of St. Mathew and St. John, the two 
apostolic evangelists (Cf. the 3d par. of Chap. II. ante). 
Even so by the hand of man “‘the twig is bent ’’ and “‘the tree 
inclines ’’—but the growth is none the less in accordance with 
the laws of Nature. 


TO4 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


upon the needs of that supremely crucial hour, a 
message whose prophetic authority should be ac- 
credited by the fact that it had been written ages 
before (two millenniums and a half ago!) and had been 
hidden and reserved and treasured up all unsuspected 
till the very hour for which it was intended—for this 
is indeed the oracle of the name as it is now uni- 
versally construed: Zephaniah (from }b¥), “‘ Jehovah 
hides, reserves, treasures-up.”’ 

Even the patronymic of the prophet is, by word- 
play at least, in harmony with his réle as a writer 
of dark sayings, the keeper of the hid treasures of 
Jehovah; for Ben Kusht may very well be rendered 
“Of dark countenance.” Indeed, instead of being 
his patronymic, Ben Kusht, “‘Son of an Ethiopian ’’— 
used in a metaphorical sense—may really have been 
his surname, according to a custom of which there 
are any number of illustrations, as, for instance, 
Joseph surnamed Barnabas, “‘Son of Consolation and 
Exhortation,’’ James and John the “Sons of Thunder” 
and “Symeon that was called Niger’’—for, as has 
been frequently pointed out, there was barely room 
for four generations from Hezekiah to Zephaniah and 
there were but three from Hezekiah to Josiah. But 
whether it is a surname or a word-play on his patro- 
nymic, the characterization ‘‘Of dark countenance” 
is peculiarly appropriate to Zephaniah, who besides 
being the keeper of the dark-sayings of Jehovah was 
also the prophet of the “‘Day of Wrath, the day of 
trouble and distress, the day of wasteness and 
desolation, the day of darkness and gloom, the day 
of clouds and thick darkness’”’ (I, 15). 

Of the man Zephaniah we know nothing except the 
implications of the superscription of his book and the 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK 105 


reflection of his personality in the three short chapters 
that make up its contents. There can be no doubt, 
however, that He who caused him to be given his 
oracular name had also especially prepared this 
treasurer of his hidden purposes for the service to 
which he was called. The Jews have a notion that _ 
the persons recorded as a prophet’s ancestors were 
themselves endowed with the prophetic spirit, and so 
perhaps we have here in Zephaniah’s unprecedented 
superscription, Zephaniah ben Cusht, ben Gedaliah, 
ben Amariah, ben Hizkiah—and so also, as it would 
seem, a son of Solomon the illustrious Gnomist, and 
of David the inspired Psalmist—an indication that 
he was both by heredity and by training especially 
susceptible to spiritual influences. 

It is evident, moreover, that this prophetic scion 
of the royal house was one of the first of his con- 
temporaries to recognize the stern realities of the 
situation. He was never deceived by any delusive 
expectation of the immediate success of Josiah’s 
reformation, though he joined in the call to amend- 
ment. His hope was in the future, and he was never 
troubled with any questionings concerning the in- 
scrutable dispensations of Providence, though he saw 
that the Great Day of Jehovah was hastening greatly 
and pictured its visitations of divine wrath in the 
darkest colors. His confidence in God was of such 
simplicity and intensity that he himself was enabled 
to see the truth and to comprehend it to the limit of 
the elements of experience at the disposal of his 
imagination, while the Spirit of Prophecy was enabled 
to enfold within the letter of his conscious message to 
his contemporaries a fuller revelation that only the 
remote posterity for whom it was intended should be 
able to interpret. 


106 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


It necessarily follows that a book of this peculiar 
character must also be unusual in its structure and 
literary methods; and yet its peculiarities in these 
respects are only more pronounced exemplifications 
of usages by no means unfamiliar. No theory of 
Biblical hermaneutics precludes the recognition of the 
right of the inspired writers and of the Spirit of 
Prophecy to employ allegory, paronomasia, anagram, 
and any other sort of double meaning or multiple 
application that the theme and the scheme of its 
development might appear to require; and that in the 
interpretation of oracular utterances the inclusion of 
all congruous meanings instead of, as in the reading of 
ordinary discourse, the exclusion of all but one, is no 
dubious novelty but is in accordance with an estab- 
lished usage of the scriptures themselves may be seen, 
for instance, in God’s own explanation of the prophetic 
name given to the patriarch Jacob at Peniel, “‘Thy 
name shall be called no more Jacob but Israel—5sit»— 
for as a prince thou hast power with God and with 
men and hast prevailed’’ (Gen. 32: 28). Here three 
different derivations are combined in the rendering, 
(1) Sarah, 1. m7, “to persevere, to prevail’; (2) Sarah, 
II. my, “to rule, to have power’’; and (3) Sarar, MWY, 
“to bea prince.”” He whois the source of all prophecy 
himself rejoices to see in the twice-born patriarch the 
fulfilment of all consistent interpretations of the 
oracle of his newname. And then Israel himself adds 
a fourth interpretation descriptive of this his most 
memorable experience, *Ish-ra’ah-’El, ““A man hath 
seen God’’; “for, said he, I have seen God face to face 
to face (Peniel), and my life is preserved’ (v. 30). 

The same usage is even more elaborately exempli- 
fied in Daniel’s interpretation of the Handwriting on 
the Wall—and even that explanation fell far short of 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK 107 


exhausting the wealth of meaning in this dramatic 
oracle, which is now found to contain a time-index 
that transfers its menace to Babylon the Great, the 
final anti-type of Belshazzar’s kingdom.* 

Indeed it is well known that multiple interpretation 
by word-play had a very prominent place in the ~ 
religious thought and ceremonial of all the peoples 
of the ancient world. This was doubtless partly 
because of the naive and uncompromising realism 
according to which they attributed mystic and even 
magic potentialities to the names of both persons and 
things. Then, too, the use of paronomasia among the 
Semites was in response to the unsurpassed facility 
with which their languages lent themselves to this 
practice—especially the unpointed Hebrew, Phe- 
nician and Aramaic; for, because of the mercurial 
fickleness of the vowels in the Semitic paradigms in 
contrast with the rigidity of the consonantal radicals, 
the ear as well as the eye was accustomed to recognize 
verbal identity entirely by the consonants. 

Divine Revelation avails itself of this device, not 
with any implication as to the oriental notions 
associated with it, but because it must needs express 
itself through human thought-forms and customs as 
well as through human speech-forms and alphabets, 
and also because this characteristically oracular con- 
struction is incomparably the most effective means to 
the attainment of some of itsends. ‘There is a sharp 
and significant difference, however, both in method 
and purpose, between the oracles of Jehovah and those 
of the so-called gods of the nations. The hexameters 
of Delphi, for instance, were craftily ambiguous, — 


* See The Christian Herald of Oct. 2, 1918, p. 1117. 


108 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


equivocal, dissonant. Their meanings were mutually 
exclusive and contradictory—so that if one should 
prove false the other must necessarily prove true. 
The Word of the Lord, on the other hand, when for any 
reason it has more than one message, is always 
symphonic; its hidden meanings and remoter applica- 
tions are like the over-tones in the voices of choir and 
orchestra that make them rich and musical, and 
characteristic; and the parable holds also for the fact 
that these over-tones are as inherent and legitimate 
as the primary notes themselves. The indices of the 
two advents, the Rubric of the Oracle of the Great 
Day of Jehovah, the Seven Prophecies of the oracle, 
and the constructions of the Great Name that the 
Voice of the Day of Jehovah proclaims, are in fact 
not mere dubious paronomasia; they are not mere 
casual equivokes; they have been sought and found 
and set forth for a purpose, they are ‘Chosen Utter- 
ances’’ that have the unequivocal authority of literal 
and precise alternative readings of an oracular enigma 
of grand and intricate but exactly defined pattern. 
Oracular utterances are of course not to be classed 
with such sublimely simple and direct revelations as 
that of John III. 16, ‘For God so loved the world 
that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever 
believeth on him should not perish but have eternal 
life.’ Nevertheless they have their place, and it is 
animportantone. They areas the score of the music 
to the words of the song; and among them all, there is 
none to compare in wealth of counterpoint with the 
Lost Prophecy St. Matthew’s clue has at last re- 
covered. No such hid treasures have been disclosed 
anywhere else in all literature sacred or profane. The 
various readings require no strain of the grammatical 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK 109g 


construction and no undue liberties with regard to 
the text. In fact, except for the enigmatic devices 
by which the three symbolic letters are singled out 
from the text, only such constructions as are warranted 
by the analogy of Timnath-Serach are to be found in 
any of them. 

The text assumed is of course that of the ancient 
pre-Masoretic version without points of any kind; 
but the vowel-letters, Aleph, He, Vav and Yod, 
being of an older tradition and very likely original, 
have been retained exactly as they are found; and 
with regard to reading-in such other vowels and vowel- 
letters as may be required—and in fact with regard to 
all other points—Hebrew usage has been scrupulously 
followed (Cf. Ges., §§ 7, 8, 11, 23 and24). Wehave 
here, therefore, no greater need than usual to reckon 
with the personal equation. There is indeed as little 
opportunity for the intrusion of the subjective factor 
in the construction of these cryptograms as there 
would be in the interpretation of the simplest passage 
in any ancient Hebrew text, unpointed and unspaced. 

The parallel readings found in these hid treasures 
are sometimes numerous and varied, but they always 
fit together without fault or accommodation—shaped 
at the quarry like the stones of Solomon’s temple. 
In particular the renderings of the Great Name are 
the faces of a hewn stone—and that stone, so long 
rejected, is found to be the chief cornerstone of the 
whole structure. With this rediscovered corner- 
stone in place, the message of Zephaniah grows into 
an edifice of peculiar beauty, ancient indeed and 
oriental in style, but thoroughly modern and western 
in its unsurpassable utility—exactly fitted to the 
needs of the Great Day for which it was designed 
more than twenty-five centuries ago. 


II0 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


It can not be overemphasized, however, that thesé 
various readings and their interpretation assume, not 
that there is no human and therefore fallible element 
anywhere in the Sacred Scriptures, not that every 
word and even every letter everywhere has been dic- 
tated by the Spirit of Prophecy and preserved by 
divine Providence; but that the divine and the human 
have collaborated in such a way as to provide a mine 
of truth that exactly corresponds in every instance 
with God’s gracious purposes on the one hand and 
with man’s requirements on the other—a revelation 
thoroughly adequate, but never superseding human 
prerogatives, a revelation that, where the end in view 
demands it, is written under the guidance of an in- 
spiration that does indeed cross every “t’’ and dot 
every “‘i,”’ and that is guarded by a Providence that 
is abundantly able to conserve what the Spirit has 
written; nay, that makes the mistakes and even the 
perversities of redactors and copyists to serve the 
truth: a revelation, however, that employs human 
agencies to meet human needs, that takes none of the 
essential burden of responsibility from human shoul- 
ders, and that accordingly has given us its treasures 
in ore that requires not only digging but smelting and 
assaying as well. 

One of the effects of the human limitations of even 
the greatest of seers is the disregard of perspective 
that seems to be characteristic of prophetic visions 
of the future— 

‘‘The near and future blend in one, 
And whatsoe’er is willed is done.” 

This characteristic seems especially marked in the 
Book of Zephaniah, but here it is rather a tribute to 
the disproportionate importance of the great events 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK IIt 

( 

that loom above the distant horizon, and we find on 

closer inspection that the artist, directed by the Spirit 

of Prophecy, provides the criteria for the necessary 
corrections. 

One of the best known and most modern of the 
commentators on the book, George Adam Smith, 
writes in The Expositors’ Bible: ‘‘The truth is that 
Zephaniah, though he found his material in the events 
of his own day, tears himself loose from history alto- 
gether. To the earlier prophets the Day of the Lord, 
the crisis of the world, is a definite point in history; 
full of terrible divine events, yet natural ones—battle, 
siege, famine, massacre and captivity. After it 
history is still to move on, common days come back 
and Israel pursue their way as a nation. But to 
Zephaniah, the Day of the Lord begins to assume what 
we call the supernatural. ...%In short, with 
Zephaniah the Day of the Lord tends to become the 
Last Day. His book is the first tinge of prophecy 
with apocalypse; that is the moment which it supplies 
in the history of Israel’s religion. And therefore it 
was with a true instinct that the great Christian 
singer of the Last Day took from Zephaniah his key- 
note’’—for the Dies Irae Dies Illa of Thomas of 
Celano is but the Vulgate’s translation of Zephaniah’s 
“‘A Day of Wrath is that day” (Zeph. 1: 15). 

It is an illuminating illustration of the methods of 
the Spirit of Prophecy that even the radical and 
naturalistic critic, like the prophet himself, wrote 
better than he knew. He was mistaken in his thought 
that ‘‘common days” were not to come back again 
after Zephaniah’s Great Day of Jehovah; for it is not 
the ‘Last Day’? as Thomas of Celano conceives it 
that the prophet pictures, but the culminating day of 


If2 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


Jehovah’s wrath, the last day of this dispensation of 
long-suffering with evil. He was mistaken also in 
his assumption that apocalyptic had its inception 
with Zephaniah; for—not to insist upon such passages 
as Isaiah XXIV.-XXVII., which some would have us 
regard as post-exilic largely for the very reason that 
they are apocalyptic—the Book of Zephaniah itself, 
like all other apocalypses, derives its method and 
spirit and much of its material from the primitive 
Picture-writing of the Stars, which, though it has 
long been largely forgotten in its original form, is 
nevertheless adequately preserved in the first chapters 
of Genesis and in those later chapters of the Pentateuch 
that tell of the tabernacle and its ordinances, as also 
in the folk-lore and temple ritual of all peoples—that 
earliest Revelation of which the Protevangel is the 
epitome. ‘There is, however, more truth than he 
realized in the critic’s judgment concerning the Book 
of Zephaniah. It is indeed an apocalypse, and such 
an apocalypse as will admit of no naturalistic explana- 
tion. The caskets in which its hid treasures are 
enclosed have been concealed in such a way that none 
could tamper with them, so securely indeed that none 
can suggest that they might have been tampered with. 
They have been sealed and covered up until the time 
of their fulfilment; and only now in due season has 
the clue of the Lost Prophecy confided to Levi- 
Matthew led to their hiding-place. It is not “the 
first tinge of prophecy with apocalypse’’ that we 
find here but, what is of far greater importance, the 
first distinctively and wholly apocalyptic book in 
The Bible, the first of a whole host of such books in 
Hebrew literature—and also the latest, the first to 
be written and the latest to be published—a worthy 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK Ii3 


fellow of the long unread and almost forgotten 
Apocalypse of the Stars preserved most fully in the 
Book of Genesis, and of the better known but as yet 
little understood apocalypses of Daniel and St. John. 

It is now to be seen that each of the four grand 
divisions of the Sacred Scriptures has its own out- | 
standing apocalypse; and that each of these apoca- 
lypses has its appropriate function in the development 
of divine revelation. The ancient and all-inclusive 
Apocalypse of the Stars, which underlies the Books of 
the Law, sets forth the whole course of Man’s moral 
history. As it is reflected in the written word, it 
tells of the Fall, the broken law, and the need and 
the promise of a Redeemer—the Seed of the Woman 
for whom the People of the Covenant were to prepare 
the way. Its cryptic Protevangel envisages both 
advents of the promised Savior, but the multiplied 
emphasis of its temple ritual is upon his coming as the 
Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. 
The Prophetic Apocalypse of Zephaniah, written just 
before the beginning of the Times of the Gentiles, 
pictures the out-working of the Protevangel and tells 
the whole story of Man’s redemption. It tells of both 
the First and Second Advents of the promised Seed 
of the Woman; but since it was to be hidden and 
reserved until the time of the end, its primary interest 
is in the Second Advent, its predictions of the coming 
and rejection of the Nazarene serving as confirma- 
tions of the Gospel records and as authentications of 
its own announcement of the final Consummation and 
of its messages to Jew and Christian. Zephaniah’s 
Prophecy was of course addressed to his fellow- 
countrymen; but his Apocalypse comes now to both 
the Synagogue and the Church and brings to each the 


Il4 HID TREASURES OF ZEP HANIAH 


specific lesson it needs. The Book of Daniel, the 
apocalypse of the Hagiography, written just after 
the beginning of the Times of the Gentiles, supple- 
ments the Book of Zephaniah with regard to both 
advents, but with special reference to the history and 
needs of the People of the Ancient Covenant; while 
the New Testament Book of Revelation is its comple- 
ment with special reference to the history and needs 
of the Christian Church. 

As a prophecy, the Book of Zephaniah was con- 
cerned with the impending visitation of divine wrath 
upon apostate Jerusalem threatened in the sanctions 
of the Mosaic Covenant—and with her subsequent 
restoration to favor after she should have repented 
and received correction. Its primary application is 
therefore to the Babylonian Captivity and its sequel. 

Such a prophecy becomes an apocalypse, however, 
when it is regarded as typical, as an exemplification of 
the hand of God in history; and this prophecy is 
dedicated to that interpretation by its insistent appeal 
to the Day of Jehovah, a conception in which is 
pictured the philosophy of history that runs through 
the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and that is first 
set forth in the primitive apocalypse that tells of the 
Fall, the Flood and the Dispersion—a philosophy that 
interprets the revelations of Science as well. 

Furthermore, Zephaniah’s Prophecy is so worded as 
to invite application to specific anti-types of the 
Babylonian Captivity and the Return to Jerusalem, 
namely, to the Roman Exile and the final Restoration 
of Zion—and this fact provides the background for 
an apocalypse that sets forth the two great events 
in the redemption of the race, the two Advents of the 
promised Savior, first as the Lamb of God that taketh 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK Los 


away the sins of the World, and then as the Lion of 
the Tribe of Judah. 

But since the story of Israel according to the flesh 
is typical of the history of the larger Spiritual Israel 
into which it is finally to be merged, we have in the 
prophecy of the Babylonian Captivity and in the 
corresponding apocalyptic prediction of the greater 
Roman Exile a composite foreshadowing of the fearful 
Roman desolation of the Christian Church that St. 
John, under the constraint of expediency, called 
Babylon the Great; and we have likewise in Zion 
restored a harbinger of the New Jerusalem. Let it 
be noted, however, that there is no assumption here 
that it is legitimate to search for ulterior meanings or 
mystical senses anywhere and everywhere in the 
sacred scriptures; and neither, on the other hand, is 
it assumed that the Book of Zephaniah is to be 
interpreted according to a canon all its own. What 
we have here is just what is to be found in all the 
seeming peculiarities of Zephaniah, an extreme, a 
double, exemplification of a usage that is not at all 
infrequent but that at the same time is only to be 
assumed in accordance with the Rule of Reason.* 
Moreover each step of this double extension of the 
application from type to antitype, from Babylon to 
Rome and from them to the more terrible Rome 
called Babylon the Great, has already been made very 
familiar through the traditional interpretation of 
Daniel and the Evangelical interpretation of the 
Revelation of St. John. The text of passages that 
are open to such an interpretation may be expected to 
suggest the antitype by certain allusions or felicitous 


* See, for instance, Fairbairn, Typology of Scripture, Vol. I., 
pp. 126 ff.; and Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics, pp. 249, 256. 


116 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


turns of expression; and so vivid are these allusions in 
the Book of Zephaniah that with him, as noted by 
George Adam Smith, “‘the Day of the Lord tends to 
become the Last Day’’—his text is in fact so con- 
structed as to seem at the crucial points to apply 
primarily to its ulterior meanings. 

The reason for the sense of mystery that pervades 
the Book of Zephaniah is now self-evident. The 
“tinge’’ of apocalyptic that was as vivid to the eyes 
of the medizeval poet as to those of the modern critic 
is seen to have been, as it were, the blur of the lights 
and shadows of these ulterior meanings falling un- 
focused and confused upon the surface sense of the 
written word. Hitherto they have been at best but 
vague suggestions without any demonstrable certifica- 
tion either as to their authority or their application. 
What was needed was such a set of indices, rubrics, 
asterisks and notations as should unquestionably 
authenticate and define these ulterior meanings and 
enable us to apply and correlate them correctly—and 
the New Book of Zephaniah provides this very 
machinery of apocalyptic, which, however, not only 
meets the needs of interpretation but also makes 
contributions of its own to the revelations of the book. 
Indeed the machinery of this first book of its kind is 
as complete as that of the last, the New Testament 
Book of Revelation, which is seven times as long; 
and it is conceived and articulated in a manner that 
is strikingly suggestive of it. Its symbolic figures 
are necessarily drawn from an entirely different 
realm—they are literary in the literal sense of the 
term, and this is one of the factors that made possible 
their long concealment—but they are often very 
felicitously reducible to the same similitudes. We 


THE PROPHET AND HIS BOOK 117 


have accordingly ventured to give the names of St. 
John’s pictorial symbols to the literary figures of 
Zephaniah that suggest them—and it will be found 
that the relationship between them is indeed far 
deeper than might be implied in a merely literary 
allusion. 

The key to this three-fold apocalypse is its master- 
word, the Proclamation of the Voice of the Day of 
Jehovah to which St. Matthew’s Clue of the Lost 
Prophecy has led us, and in which he read the name 
“‘Nazarene,’’ my39. This master-word is Zephaniah’s 
presentation of the General Apocalyptic significance 
that comes into his Prophecy with the Vision of the 
Day of Jehovah. Its message develops in the un- 
folding of the apocalypse it helps to interpret; but 
its full significance is finally summed up in the last 
chapter of the Hid Treasures, where it is found 
worthy of the suggestive title of ‘‘The Little Book 
of the Great Name’’—Chap. XIV. 

The first construction to be unlocked by the master- 
word is of course the primary reading of the Prophecy 
itselfi—and the restored Proclamation of the Voice 
is found to fit exactly into its immediate context and 
also to reveal a more complete consistency in the book 
as a whole—Chap. VII. 

The Apocalypse proper begins with the construction 
of the text that finds in the Babylonian Captivity 
a type of the Roman Exile and in the Return of the 
Captives a promise of the final Restoration of Zion. 
Its revelations concerning the two advents of the 
Savior are set forth in Chapters VIII. and IX. 

The third application of the Prophecy, which tells 
of Babylon the Great and which is therefore in sub- 
stance closely parallel to much of the Apocalypse of 


118 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


St. John, is found to suggest in its structure also one 
of St. John’s major symbols, the “‘book close sealed 
with seven seals”? that furnishes the framework of 
all of the Book of Revelation that follows the Letters 
to the Churches. It _is contained in the Seven 
Prophecies, the Seven Seals, the Seven Counter- 
seals and the Stigmata, which, with the Little Book 
of the Great Name, constitute the apocalyptic 
machinery of the Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah 
and make known the circumstances and the portents 
of the Second Advent—Chapters X. to XIII. 


VII 


THE GREAT DAY OF JEHOVAH 


THE PROPHET’S MESSAGE TO HIS CONTEMPORARIES 


T is of course very evident that St. Matthew’s 
rendering of the proclamation of the Voice of 
the Day of Jehovah was not its original accept- 

ance. ‘‘Nazarene is the name of the Mighty One” 
would have had no significance to the prophet’s con- 
temporaries, and was doubtless a meaning altogether 
unsuspected by the prophet himself. A rendering 
of the restored text that exactly fits both the context 
and the times of the first application of the prophecy 
is, however, not far toseek. Retaining the Masoretic 
pointing of oY, Sham, the passage becomes: 


MIA ISO ua atin 


“The Great Day of Jehovah is near, it is near and 
hasteneth greatly. (Hark!) The Voice of the Day 
of Jehovah! What is proclaimed? ‘There is the 
Mighty One!’ ” 

This is a very obvious reading; and it is easy to 
understand, therefore, how, even with a correct text, 
the fuller meaning of the prophecy could escape notice 
until the event revealed it to St. Matthew. ‘This is 
also indeed the one rendering that fits exactly into 
the prophet’s argument with his fellow-countrymen. 
He has already denounced the abominable evils of 

* A contraction for MI¥I7ND. Cf. Ges., §37. For asimilar 


use of an interrogative construction, see Song of Solomon 5: 8, 
R. V. Marg. 


119 


120 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


his times (I. 2-11), he has declared God’s purpose of 
exacting a terrible vengeance (I. 2, 7-9), and he has 
revealed the fact that the fearful day of reckoning 
is near at hand—‘‘ Hold thy peace at the presence of 
the Lord Jehovah, for the Day of Jehovah is at hand”’ 
(I. 7); but to all his warnings he finds the people in- 
different. Many of them “say in their heart, Jehovah 
will not do good, neither will he do evil” (I. 12). The 
prophet therefore reminds them of the threatenings 
of the ancient covenant (I. 13, quoting Deut. 28: 
30-31), which, it would seem, had just been freshly 
and vividly brought before them by the finding of the 
long lost and forgotten autograph copy of its Deutero- 
nomic version in the temple archives. Hecalls atten- 
tion to the signs of the times—the Voice of the Day of 
Jehovah—that ought to prove to them that the 
threatenings of Moses are on the eve of fulfilment, 
that ‘‘the Great Day of Jehovah is near, it is near and 
hasteneth greatly’’ (I. 14). And what is the truth 
that is ‘‘shouted aloud”’ (m¥3) by the ‘“‘ Voice of the 
Day of Jehovah’’—by all the circumstances that 
heralditsadvent? This, that Jehovah is no indifferent 
absentee, no inert abstraction, nor even a mere im- 
personal Power that makes for righteousness, but 
“ainw, Sham Gibbér, “right there, a Mighty One” 
—and supremely ready for action; for of all the words 
in the Hebrew vocabulary, Gzbb6r is the one that most 
forcefully controverts the idea of inertness and 
indifference. 

It was therefore Jehovah himself to whom Zeph- 
aniah’s hearers referred the term ‘‘Mighty One,”’ 
Jehovah “in the midst of’’ his people but as yet 
unincarnate; and this use of Gibbdr to mean a special 
manifestation of the divine presence and power, the 


GREAT DAY OF JEHOVAH I2t 


Champion of Israel whether spiritually present as 
Jehovah of Hosts or incarnate as the Messiah, is in 
accordance with immemorial usage—Cf. Deut. 10: 17; 
5.12495, 07 184.0215 210 N21? Jer 32 1 Os Nee O32: 
The prophet, however, continues to plead with his 
fellow countrymen, and assures them that whether . 
Jehovah as a “Mighty One”’ is present to ‘‘do good”’ 
to them or to ‘‘do evil”’ fortunately still remains for 
them to determine. It looks indeed like a “day of 
wrath”’ inexorable that is coming upon them (I. 
15-18); but, ‘Before the decree go forth,” cries the 


prophet ... “‘seek Jehovah, seek righteousness; it 
may be ye will be hid in the day of Jehovah’s wrath”’ 
(III. 1-37). 


The appeal is especially addressed to the “meek of 
the land that have kept the ordinances’’—as if they 
might possibly become saviors of their fellows like 
the ten righteous of Abraham’s prayer for Sodom— 
and it is reinforced by visions of divine visitations 
upon the hostile nations round about (II]. 4-15) that 
might easily be construed as interventions in behalf of 
the people of Jehovah of Hosts (III. 7-11); but the 
prophet foresees that all his exhortations will be in 
vain, that ‘“‘correction’’ can only come through the 
rod of chastisement, and so he cries, ‘‘Alas for her 
that is rebellious and polluted, for the oppressing 
city! She obeyed not the Voice. She received not 
correction’’ (III. 1-2). It is to be noted here that 
this oracle of the first and second verses of the third 
chapter derives its force from that of the fourteenth 
verse of the first chapter and in turn confirms the 
restored reading: for ‘“‘She obeyed not the Voice”’ 
assumes that a Voice has already uttered a proclama- 
tion; and what that proclamation was, is implied in 


122 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


the remainder of the verse, ‘‘She received not correc- 
tion, she trusted not in Jehovah, she drew not near 
to her God.’ It was the Voice of the Day of Jehovah 
heralding a Mighty One, Jehovah himself, the Cham- 
pion of Israel, who, cost what it might to them and to 
himself, would “‘save his people from their sins ’’— 
who came to save them from their enemies also if they 
would only choose repentance and amendment in- 
stead of the correction that waits upon punishment. 

Jerusalem ‘‘obeyed not the Voice,’ even as Zeph- 
aniah predicted, and ‘‘walked contrary unto”’ the 
Mighty One both in his providential intervention as 
Jehovah of Hosts and in his incarnation as the lowly 
Nazarene; and her punishment was, in the first in- 
stance, the Babylonian Captivity, and, in the second, 
the fearful Roman Exile that still continues and that 
will continue until, with all the nations of the Earth, 
the People of the Ancient Covenant receive correction 
and are finally obedient unto the Voice and “call 
upon the name of Jehovah”’ (III. 9)—or, as the 
passage may be translated, “‘call themselves by the 
name of Jehovah’’—and “‘take refuge’’ in that name 
(III. 12), the new name revealed in the restored text 
of the Lost Prophecy. 

The apostates of Jerusalem were indeed sadly 
mistaken when they said ‘in their heart, Jehovah 
will not do good neither will he do evil’’ (I. 12); and 
the prophet was eternally right when he replied, 
interpreting the Voice of the Day of Jehovah for them, 
Sham Gibbor, “He is right there, a Mighty One (One 
supremely capable and ready for action)”’ (I. 14). 
Fearful was the “‘evil’’ that the Babylonian minister 
of the divine chastisements did to rebellious and 
polluted Jerusalem (II. 1) in that Day of Wrath— 


GREAT DAY OF JEHOVAH 123 


and even this “evil’’ was only a warning foretaste of 
the punishment in store for continued perversity. 
But in wrath Jehovah remembers mercy; he will not 
always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever. 
The prophet looks forward, therefore, to the time when 
God’s purposes of correction shall have been ac- 
complished, and so he finds in the Proclamation of 
the Voice of the Day of Jehovah a promise behind the 
threat:—Sham Guibbér, “Jehovah is right there—a 
Mighty One to do good.”” Even the “‘evil’’ he brings 
upon his people is itself intended for ‘‘good”’ in the 
end. He is “the Mighty One who will save,’’ Gibbér 
Yoshia‘ (III. 17), and he will surely “‘bring back the 
captivity’’ of Jerusalem (III. 9). Indeed to the con- 
fident faith of the prophet, the vision of the glad 
Return of the Captives becomes a fore-glimpse of the 
far more glorious Restoration that shall bring back 
all captivities, the Consummation of the Ages that 
waits upon the working out of the Great Salvation 
according to the laws of human development and 
under the shepherding of Divine Providence, which 
uses to that end the rod and the staff of the Day of 
Jehovah. 


Vit 


THE FIRST ADVENT 


THE PROPHECY AS IT WAS READ By St. MATTHEW 


HOUGH the prophecies of Zephaniah apply first 
AL of all to the events of his own times, those 
events were of such a nature as not only to 
prefigure, but also actually to include by implication, 
all the remaining crises of the history of Redemption; 
for with the Babylonian Captivity, their prophetic 
type, began the succession of judgments upon the 
House of Judah that will only end with the age—and 
it is significant that the Oracle of the Great Day of 
Jehovah is prefaced with allusions to the Scriptures 
in which these successively expanding sevenfold 
visitations of judgment are threatened.* So marked 
is the impression of an all-inclusive scope in the Book 
of Zephaniah that he has been universally and right- 
fully regarded as above all others the Prophet of the 
Last Day. 

His theme is in reality, however, the Great Day of 
Jehovah, of which the Last Day is indeed to be the 
consummation, the dénouement, but whose out- 
working is embodied in the whole series of divine 
interventions—Days of Jehovah—of which the events 
of his own times were the first crystallization; and so 
in his pages the contempt of Jerusalem for the Mighty 
One he proclaims becomes a prophecy of the rejection 

* Compare Zephaniah 1: 13 with Deut. 28: 30-31; and also 
with Lev. 26: 16, 20, 31 and 32. 

124 


THE FIRST ADVENT 125 


of the Messiah, and his confident expectation of the 
return of the captives from Babylon becomes a vision 
of the final victory of the Conquering Christ and the 
Restoration of all things. 

The vistas of Zephaniah’s oracles include, therefore, 
not only the Seventy years of Captivity that followed _ 
the refusal of Jerusalem to obey the Voice of the 
Day of Jehovah as it was uttered by the prophet 
in person when he proclaimed the immediate presence 
of Jehovah as a Mighty One—a Mighty Avenger or a 
Mighty Deliverer, as she herself should determine— 
but also the treading down of Jerusalem that fills up 
the measure of the far greater heptad of the Times of 
the Gentiles (Cf. Luke 21: 24), the visitation upon 
her because she obeyed not the Voice when it spoke 
through the lips of the great fore-runner, who ‘‘came 
that he might bear witness of the light, that all might 
believe through him,’’ “the Voice of one crying in 
the wilderness,’’ who seeing Jesus of Nazareth ‘‘bare 
witness saying, I beheld the Spirit descending as a 
dove out of heaven and it abode upon him. And I 
knew him not, but he that sent me to baptize in water 
he said unto me, upon whomsoever thou shalt see 
the Spirit descending and abiding upon him, the same 
is he that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit, and I have 
seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of 
God’”’ (John 1: 29-34). 

St. Matthew’s rendering of the Proclamation of the 
Voice of the Day of Jehovah—‘ Nazarene is the 
name of the Mighty One’’—is therefore entirely 
warranted by the scope of the prophecy in which it is 
found, and is likewise a faithful presentation of the 
historic witness to the Nazarene through the Voice of 
the Baptist; and we will find also that it fits into its 


126 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


context as precisely as does the construction of the 
Proclamation that applies to the prophet’s own 
times—nay, more, that it is attested by just such 
credentials as are demanded in view of its long ob- 
scurity and its sudden emergence with such lofty 
claims. 

Zephaniah does indeed wonderfully shadow forth 
the whole gist of the Gospel, as we shall see; but in 
accordance with his programme of sketching the 
development of the Great Day of Jehovah, he tells 
here simply the story of the rejection of the Suffering 
Savior that was to bring upon his people the full 
measure of the penalties of the broken covenant— 
and what but a lament could be the fitting introduc- 
tion to such a story? The prophet cries, “Alas, the 
rebellious and polluted! the oppressing City! She 
obeyed not the Voice!’”’ (III. 1 and 2)—the Voice of 
the Day of Jehovah, the Voice of John the Baptist, 
the Voice of the Holy Spirit descending as a dove out 
of heaven and saying “This is my beloved Son in 
whom I am well pleased ’’—Matt. 3:17. It is indeed 
easy for us to recognize this passage as the introduc- 
tion to the Prophecy of the First Advent, it seems un- 
mistakable; but to establish its Messianic application 
beyond the shadow of a doubt and leave no room to 
question the legitimacy of St. Matthew’s rendering 
of the Proclamation of the Voice, there is stationed 
here—not as an exceptional device, but in accordance 
with the literary structure of the revelation—an 
apocalyptic choir of four voices that chants a full and 
harmonious chorus of confirmation. 

The preceding sections of the book (II. 5-15) con- 
sist of a series of oracles that exemplify Jehovah’s © 
righteous judgments upon the surrounding nations 


THE FIRST ADVENT Ley. 


and form the basis of the prophet’s final warning to 
Jerusalem. Now this series of oracles is suggestive 
and geographical instead of complete and chrono- 
logical. It points first to the doom of the nearest 
unfriendly neighbors, Philistia in the Southwest and 
Moab in the Northeast, and then predicts the visita- 
tions upon the remotest enemies in the same relative 
directions, Ethiopia and Nineveh—an arrangement 
that makes the oracle against Nineveh an introduction 
to that against Jerusalem, exactly as the fall of 
Nineveh was the immediate precursor of Nebuchad- 
nezzar’s first gesture against the Jewish capital. For 
the men to whom Zephaniah had preached, therefore, 
the overthrow of Nineveh was the harbinger of their 
own impending ruin, a proof that the prophet was 
right and that the Great Day of Jehovah was near, 
very near, and hastening greatly. It was more than 
that, however, for like every one of God’s threatenings 
of punishment it was also an offer of mercy. It wasa 
final appeal to all, especially to the meek of the land 
who had measurably kept the ordinances, to seek 
Jehovah, to seek righteousness; for the prophet had 
said: ‘It may be ye will be hid in the day of Jehovah’s 
wrath” (II. 1-3). Even aside from the prophet’s 
exhortation, this suggestion was inevitable to the 
Jews of Zephaniah’s times, for they could not fail 
to remember Jehovah’s loving-kindness toward this 
same wicked but then repentant Nineveh in the days 
of Jonah, and his relenting and turning away the 
threatened destruction even within forty days of the 
time appointed. 

To us, however, a more insistent Dieeatn here is 
the perverse contrast between Jerusalem and the 
heathen metropolis to which the Savior himself 


128 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


called attention: ‘‘The men of Nineveh shall stand up 
in the judgment with this generation and shall con- 
demn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; 
and behold a greater than Jonah is here’”’ (Matt. 
12:41). : 

It is these inevitable suggestions of the juxtaposi- 
tion of the oracles against Nineveh and against 
Jerusalem that furnish the background on which the 
Index of the First Advent is set forth. The exclama- 
tion that stands between the two oracles and that may 
be construed with either of them, the first verse of 
the third chapter, reads in Hebrew: 


myn pyr ndsasy ae 


The American Revised Version, applying it to Jeru- 
salem, renders it, ‘‘Woe to her that is rebellious and 
polluted! to the oppressing city!’’ But written as 
follows: 

mov myn mdsaoy ase yn 


and construed with the preceding oracle, it becomes 
a reminder of Jonah’s mission to Nineveh. Taking 
AND as the Pu‘al part. of N1, “‘to fear,’ “to revere 
God’; nbxa2 as the Niph. part. of I. Gea, “to redeem”; 
and yn as the Hiph. of y, “to arouse, to stir up, to 
warn,’’ we read, ‘‘Woe to her that was made to 
revere God and was redeemed when Jonah warned 
her!?? For Nineveh soon forgot the warning of 
Jonah, and so to her also applied the accepted reading, 
“Woe to her that is rebellious and polluted! to the 
oppressing city!’’* 

The name Jonah, 43’, is however the same as the 
Hebrew word for Dove; and, construed with the 


* Zeph. 3:1; Cf. Nahum 3: I. 


THE FIRST ADVENT 129 


succeeding arraignment of Jerusalem, and read in the 
light of Matt. 3: 17, the passage may be translated, 
‘‘ Woe to her that is rebellious and polluted! The 
Dove—The Holy Spirit—warned her!’’ But (III. 
2) ‘*she heeded not his Voice,’’ etc. 

In further keeping with the function of this passage 
as the asterisk of the First Advent is the fact that in 
the common speech of Bible times, the sturdy name 
Jochanan, }iM"", just as it has become John with us, 
was often softened to Jonah—compare John 1: 42 
and 21: 15 with Matt. 16: 17; and also, in the Septu- 
acini es wines» 25°93) with 1.) Chrony 3 324) w/the 
outstanding lesson of the Book of Jonah would 
suggest, in accordance with the well-known aptness 
of the names of the other canonical prophets, that 
the name of this prophet was indeed an example of 
such a contraction and was originally and in reality 
Jochanan, which means “Jehovah is. gracious.” 
With this inference agrees also the name Oannes that 
Berosus gives to an Assyrian fish-god who was said 
to have come up out of the sea to bring his people 
instruction and warning—a name in which not a few 
have found a reference to Jonah. This identification 
originated with the German scholar F. C. Baur, who 
regarded Jonah as a literary echo of Oannes. Dr. 
Henry Clay Trumbull, late editor of the Sunday 
School Times, on the other hand, would make Oannes 
a reminiscence of Jonah.* In either case, the name 
John is unmistakably suggested here, and accordingly 
the pronouncement against Jerusalem may be freely 
rendered: ‘‘ Woe to her that is rebellious and pol- 
luted! to the oppressing city! Through John, the 
Voice of One crying in the Wilderness, the Holy 

Sours Bibalit) Vol. Xl) Part 1) 


130 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


Spirit himself sought to arouse her, even as he had 
warned Nineveh through the prophet Jonah; but 
she heeded not the Voice; and in shameful contrast 
to Nineveh, which repented at the preaching of 
Jonah, she received not correction, she trusted not 
in Jehovah (the Mighty One Incarnate, the infinitely 
‘Greater than Jonah’’); she drew not near to 
her God.” 

The arraignment of Jerusalem that follows corre- 
sponds with the conditions there at the time of the 
rejection of the Nazarene; the roaring and ravening 
house of Herod was in possession of the throne; the 
teachers of religion were occupied with trivial and 
insincere legal quibbles; and the temple was pro- 
faned with extortionate traffic (III. 3, 4). Especially 
significant, in view of the illegal night trials of Jesus 
before the representatives of the high-priesthood, 
are the statements that “her priests have done 
violence to the law”’ (III. 4), and that ‘‘her judges 
are evening wolves that lay nothing aside until the 
morrow’’ (III. 3). The ultimate destruction of the 
city is more than intimated in a close sequence that 
has almost the form as well as the force of a syllogism: 
(1) the declaration (III. 5) of the righteousness of 
Jehovah in the midst of her, who will not act in- 
equitably or partially; (2) the reminder (III. 6) of 
the desolations he has wrought in the punishment of 
other nations—‘‘their cities are destroyed so that 
there is no inhabitant’’; and (3) the sorrowful picture 
(III. 7) of the utter and hope-annulling perversity 
of the people—in response to the overtures of mercy, 
“they rose up early and corrupted all their ways.” 
Their dispersion in accordance with the sanctions of 
the broken covenant is plainly foreshadowed as a 


THE FIRST ADVENT 131 


consequence of the fact that they would not receive 
the correction that could alone have prevented ‘their 
dwelling from being cut off’’ (III. 7); and the long and 
weary centuries of homeless wandering are suggested 
in the sentence pronounced upon them (III. 8), 
“Therefore wait ye for me, saith Jehovah, until the 
day that I rise up to testify.” Israel’s fortunes are 
to be merged in those of the Gentiles; and their 
restoration is to wait until the day of the final Reversal 
of all Earthly conditions; until the day when Jehovah 
as Judge shall testify that it is enough, that the 
chastisements of his Providence have accomplished 
their purpose of correction—until the Last Great Day 
of Jehovah. 

The Proclamation of the Voice of the Day of 
Jehovah in which St. Matthew read a prediction that 
“‘Nazarene’’ was to be the name of the Messiah is 
therefore found to be susceptible of this construction 
by no mere happy coincidence, but because it is a 
felicitous element in an exactly circumstantial Messi- 
anic prophecy. 

It is not a mere coincidence either, as we shall see, 
but a result of the unfailing cooperation between 
Divine Providence and the Spirit of Prophecy in the 
working out of the divine purposes, that, as the name 
of the Mighty One is found in the corrupt text of the 
Masorites, written Mar Tsoreach, ns, with Nun 
supplanted by Resh, it echoes the bitter cry of the 
Crucified Savior; for so the Proclamation of the Voice 
of the Day of Jehovah is made to tell of the seeming 
triumph of the Adversary on Calvary (Cf. Matt. 
27: 46, 50; Mar. 15: 37; Luke 23: 46), and of the 
sacrifice there consummated. 

But with Resh erased and Nun restored, and 


I 32 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


interpreted according to the recently recognized 
radical meaning of the verb Z’savach IT, it becomes for 
us Minne-Tseriach, nvs7jo,* “‘From the Sepulcher ’’— 
a prophecy gloriously fulfilled in the Resurrection 
of the Captain of Our Salvation. 


* See Ges., § 90, 3 a, for 3; Tseriach is written MY in I Sam, 
T3103 


IX 


THE SECOND ADVENT 


THE MESSAGE OF THE LOST PROPHECY FOR THE 
TIMES OF ITS RECOVERY 


E may be certain that in the oracles of the 
Prophet of the Last Day, the Voice of the 


Day will not be found to have a proclama~ 
tion exactly fitted to announce each of the crises that 
lead up to the dénouement and to have none with 
which to herald that climacteric event of the ages 
itself. We may be certain that, having announced 
the Day of the Visitation of the Mighty One and 
having afterward heralded his gracious Advent with 
the offer of Salvation, this Voice, which since then has 
been silent and forgotten so long, speaks now, not 
merely to reiterate its ancient pronouncements, but 
to deliver its final message, and to hail the Savior at 
his promised Second Coming in glorious majesty as 
the Mighty Conqueror, the King of Righteousness, 
the Prince of Peace—and the Judge of all the Earth. 

The prophet assures us (III. 9 and 12) that at last 
the remnant of Israel will listen to the Voice and 
“take refuge in the name of Jehovah,” a Messianic 
name. What shall it be? It must be a name that 
will confess their new-found faith in Jesus, and the 
name Jesus alone could have no such significance; 
Jesus of Nazareth is the name they have called him 
in derision; and Jesus the Messiah can no longer quite 
express the full truth to which they must subscribe, 

133 


134 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


for Jesus belongs now to the Spiritual Israel of the 
whole wide world. 

‘What is proclaimed’”’ by the Voice of the Day of 
Jehovah is again equal to the occasion. It is indeed, 
as God himself is represented as calling it, ‘'a Chosen 
Utterance.”’ | 

How we are to construe this Chosen Utterance so as 
to find in it the third and last message of the Day of 
Jehovah is explicitly set forth at exactly the logical 
point in the course of the prophecy—in the ninth 
verse of the third chapter of the Book; and just as the 
asterisk of the First Advent was appropriately the 
lament that introduced the sad story of the Rejection 
of the Suffering Savior and the consequent rejection 
and exile of the people of disobedient Jerusalem, so 
this asterisk of the Second Advent, in which all 
peoples are seen serving the Lord with one accord, is 
the worthy introduction to the glorious picture of the 
Final Restoration, a picture so different in tone from 
the preceding oracles that some have refused to credit 
it to Zephaniah. ‘This ninth verse itself has hitherto 
been found so enigmatic that the more radical of 
the critics have not hesitated to delete it from the 
text “as very probably (?) an intrusion and dis- 
turbance of the argument.”” It is as follows: 


aqn3 may ony Ss ams Inv 
sms nse siayS min ovina nda mpd 


The interpretation of this passage hinges upon the 
following expressions: 

1. Saphah bhertrah—an12 naw. Saphah means 
“lip, language, utterance’’; while bhertirah, which is 
translated ‘ pure’’ (purged) in the traditional render- 


THE SECOND ADVENT 135 


ing of the verse, has also the meaning of “polished, 
tested, selected, chosen’’—viz., ‘‘polished arrows,” 
Isa. 49: 2;.“‘chosen valiant men,’ I. Chron. 7: 40. 
So in Job 33: 3, Elihu says he is going to answer Job 
"12, ‘‘choicely,” “with careful diction.” Saphah 
bhertirah is therefore an expression that has been care- 
fully selected, a “chosen utterance’’-—and how 
marvelously the word bhertrah itself functions in 
this passage! Its two distinct meanings, “‘purged”’ 
and “‘chosen,’’ suggest two promises of God both of 
which are in accordance with his revealed purposes 
in this very connection: (1) the promise of a new 
Evangelism that is to restore the ‘pure lip,’’ the 
symbol of the pure heart that is so necessary to 
fellowship with God (Cf. Isa. 6: 5-7 and Ps. 19: 14 
and Matt. 5: 8); and (2) the promise foretokened at 
Pentecost of a Chosen Speech, an eclectic language or 
its equivalent—conditions restoring free intercourse 
among the peoples of all the earth so that the whole 
world may be evangelized. At the same time these 
two meanings are combined in a rubric that sets 
forth, as the marks of identification of the Proclama- 
tion referred to, exactly the outstanding characteristics 
of my3); for it is indeed the wonderfully well-chosen 
and polished utterance of the Voice of the Day of 
Jehovah, and it has at last been purged from the 
Resh that so long obscured and defiled it. 

2. Haphak, 327. This verb may be translated 
“‘turn to’’ in the sense of ‘‘restore’’; but the usual 
meaning is ‘‘to turn over, turn about, reverse ’’—viz., 
to turn the back, Jos. 7: 8; to turn a dish upside down, 
II. Kings 21: 13; to turn a cake, Hos. 7: 8; to reverse 
the expected dénouement, Est. 9: 1. 

The most natural rendering of the passage is, there- 


136 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


fore, ‘I will reverse for the peoples the Chosen and 
Purged Utterance, that they may all call upon the 
name of Jehovah to serve him with one accord.”’ 

3. ‘El ‘Ammim, nox, is of course very properly 
translated “‘to the peoples,’ or ‘‘for the peoples’’; 
but the preposition ’el, 5x, may also mean “‘in addition 
to,” “‘together with’’ (Cf. 1 Sam. 14: 34—see B.D.B., 
p. 40, 58 No. 5); while the noun ‘am, oY, from the root 
boy, “to be comprehensive, to include,’ whence also 
the preposition ‘im, oy, ‘‘by the side of,’’ and ithe 
noun ‘ammah, nny, ‘juxtaposition,’ means primarily 
“those united, connected, related,’’ and is applied to 
a tribe of people, an assembly, the followers of a 
chieftain, and also to an individual “‘kinsman’”’ (See 
B.D.B., pp. 766 and 769 a). Used here as a metaphor, 
it readily suggests, therefore, the words and phrases 
that are in the same context with the chosen utterance; 
and so the phrase ’el ‘ammim may be rendered, 
‘with its context.” 

The passage in which we have found the Index of 
Zephaniah’s prophecy of the Second Advent is accord- 
ingly, just as parallelism with the Index of the First 
Advent would demand, an oracular expression of 
multiple but symphonic construction. It reads, 
“For at that time I will restore to the peoples a 
clear language, and I will reverse with its context 
the Chosen Utterance (the Proclamation of the Voice 
of the Day of Jehovah) purged (from the defilement 
and obscuration of Resh), that they may all call upon 
the name of Jehovah (the name declared in the 
Reverse of the Chosen Utterance) to serve him with 
one consent.”’ 

Far from being a ‘‘disturbance of the argument,”’ 
therefore, this enigmatic verse furnishes just what 


THE SECOND ADVENT 137 


the argument requires, a transition from wrath to 
favor, which it gives in the assurance that after the 
nations have been chastened by the ‘‘fire of God’s 
zeal’’ (v. 8), there will follow a New Dispensation— 
the Chosen Utterance of the Voice of the Day of 
Jehovah will be reversed together with the whole 
oracle in which it is found; and the name of the 
Mighty One made known in this Reverse Reading 
will herald and characterize the full and final Parousia 
in which he is to establish his world-wide kingdom; 
while its ‘‘context,’’ as we shall see, will appropriately 
reveal the circumstances and the portents of his 
coming. In Zephaniah’s time, the Voice announced 
the presence of Jehovah of Hosts as a Mighty One 
to punish unrighteousness—and a Mighty One to 
save such as heeded its warning and received correc- 
tion. In the days of John the Baptist, the Voice still 
cried, ‘‘Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at 
hand,” and hailed the lowly Nazarene as the Lamb of 
God, a Suffering Savior whom all must take up the 
cross and follow. Heretofore God has been long- 
suffering toward evil and disciplinary in his dealings 
with his own people; but now conditions are changed. 
The long season of growth is ended, the time of the 
harvest has come, and the tares are to be “‘gathered”’ 
and “‘devoured with the fire of the zeal’’ (III. 8) of 
the King of Kings and Lord of Lords; but with the 
true-hearted chastisement has at last brought to 
maturity the peaceable fruit of righteousness, and so 
the Champion ought to be announced by a name that 
would suggest, not Gethsemane and Calvary, but 
the Mount of Transfiguration and the revelation of 
the glory his people are to share. Especially for the 
prophet’s own kindred—and it is they to whom he 


138 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


speaks primarily—will the situation be reversed. 
Their captivity will be brought back, for they will 
no longer be disobedient to the Voice but will take 
refuge in the name it proclaims (III. 12)—they are 
to accept the name that will restore them to fellow- 
ship with the Spiritual household of Israel. The 
figurative interpretation of the verb Haphak, 45h, 
tells us therefore that, in accordance with the complete 
reversal of conditions and programme in the new 
Dispensation, the “‘Chosen Utterance’’ of the Voice 
that heralds God’s providence will be found to contain 
a name of correspondingly reversed import; and it 
is in suggestive agreement with this message that the 
literal interpretation of the verb tells us how to find 
the new version of my20; for as the prophets often 
emphasized and dramatically illustrated their words 
with symbolic acts—as Ezekiel, for instance, in his 
vivid representation of the sieges of Samaria and 
Jerusalem turned from his left side to his right in 
token of the turning of the divine vengeance from one 
city to the other (Ezek. 4: 4-8)—so the reversal of 
all things in the New Era is symbolized by the literal 
reversal of the Chosen Utterance with which it is 
proclaimed. And we remember the precedent and 
warrant provided for this peculiar but dramatically 
significant construction in Timnath-Serach and Tim- 
nath-Cheres, the first prophetic whisperings of this 
same Chosen Utterance. 

We have taken for granted that Saphah bherfirah, 
‘“‘the chosen utterance that has been restored to 
purity,’ must refer to the remarkable proclamation 
of the Voice of the Day of Jehovah, which has now 
been cleansed from the defilement of Resh; but that 
there may be no doubt about it, the oracle in which 


THE SECOND ADVENT 139 


the proclamation of the name ‘‘Nazarene”’ is found 
(I. 14), the ‘‘context’’ that is to share its reverse 
reading adds its authority also to that of the Index 
and makes its application unquestionable. By a 
rubric of its own, it explicitly authorizes the reading 
in reverse, and emphasizes my as the center of 
interest—points it out as indeed the Saphah bherirah 
referred to. 

In ancient manuscripts there was originally no 
spacing of the letters to separate either words or 
verses, and so it is entirely permissible to find a double 
meaning in the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of 
Zephaniah by construing it, together with the last 
letters of the preceding verse, in the following manner: 

12 [xlip Svan marron php ally 
133 DY MINI AVTTAY PIP IND WD 


The translation is then: ‘In the Great Day of 
Jehovah, its reverse will utter an oracle. Read in it 
mos3o, the Voice of the Day of Jehovah, the name of 
the Mighty One, will gain exceedingly.” 

This reading hinges upon the two constructions 
given Mp; and that these paronomasia are indeed 
integral parts of the revelation is certified, not only 
by the aptness with which they fit into its structure 
here, but also by their significant relationship to the 
reverse reading of the oracle itself—as we shall see. 

Keri, “p (from imp), “ Reverse,” is found nowhere 
else in the Scriptures except in the chapter that con- 
tains the original draft of the covenant between God 
and his peculiar people, the twenty-sixth chapter of 
Leviticus—paralleled and amplified in Deut. 28-30— 
the prophecy of Seven Times of Woe and of Final 
Restoration that Zephaniah takes as the text of his 
discourse, and of which the Great Day of Jehovah is 


140 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


to bring the fulfilment. ‘There it occurs seven times 
in the elaboration and unfolding of the truth that, 
if his People walk “contrary’’ to him, God must 
necessarily walk “‘contrary’’ to them. Its employ- 
ment by Zephaniah is therefore in continuation of 
its use in the ancient Scripture he expounds; and its 
connotation is in keeping with the symbolism of the 
reverse reading of his oracle, which heralds the final 
reversal of the estranged relations between God and 
his people. 

Kiryé, “its reverse,’ applies to the whole of the 
Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah; but let us first 
consider the name proclaimed by the Voice, the name 
“Nazarene,” miyi. Read in reverse with Tsade, ¥, 
resolved into DN (ts), its phonetic equivalents, accord- 
ing to the analogy of the name of Joshua’s city, this 
Chosen Utterance becomes p[8]3 now, Christ— Ne'um, 
 CHRIST—THE WORD OF GOD.” 

Can it be possible that we have here from the pen of 
a Jew of the Seventh Century before Christ—and he 
a scion of the royal house—the Greek equivalent that 
was to supplant his own Hebrew word Messiah as 
the title of the Son of David? This was a change 
fraught with tremendous significance for both Jew 
and Gentile. No one can deny, therefore, that 
‘Christ ’’ is indeed the one word supremely suggestive 
and appropriate here; and that its phonetic elements 
are abundantly indicated in this proclamation of the 
Voice of the Day of Jehovah is equally clear; for the 
resolution of Tsade (¥)* into TS (nM or Band D, Yor), 


*The composite nature of Tsade is obscured by the close 
relationship of its components T and S, both being linguals; but 
that it is really a double consonant is evident from the fact that 
two distinct types of the letter are discriminated; the soft, the 
Arabic Sad, in which the S sound predominates; and the hard, 


b 


THE SECOND ADVENT Iq! 


which would be an entirely permissible cryptic device 
in any context, is peculiarly suggested in this anagram, 
which may be derived from either I. mys or II. my 
in which, as we have seen (Part I., Chap. I.), the two 
types of the letter are found, the ‘‘T”’ type and the 
““S”’ type; and besides and conclusively, it is warranted 
by the providentially provided precedent of its ex- 
emplification just where it is most authoritative—in 
the mutations of the oracular name of Joshua’s 
heritage in Israel, which was, as we have found, the 
first prophetic whisper of this very Chosen Utterance. 
The necessary phonetic elements are unquestionably 
at hand. Whether they are actually intended to 
be construed as the word Christ or not is dependent, 
not upon the horizon of the human author, but upon 
the scope of his inspired writings; and it is already 
evident that this word is in truth demanded here as 
an integral and essential part of a complex and organic 
whole such as will brook no denial, and such as needs 
to assign no other basis for its demand than the 
time-honored belief that “‘no prophecy ever came by 
the will of man, but’‘men spake from God, being moved 
by the Holy Spirit’’-—often spake and wrote far 
better than they knew. 

the Arabic Dad, in which the T sound is more prominent. To 
the same effect is the testimony of the fact that in the later 
occasional commutations of this consonant it is in some cases 
changed to {&—so “¥3 becomes "%4J—and in others to a simple 
sibilant—as when PM¥ becomes pnw. Cf. Ges., §19.1. In 
M83) as derived from I. MY, ‘‘to cry aloud,”’ we have the more 
sibilant type of the letter; while in this name of the Master as 
derived from the root of Nazareth, II. M5¥, ‘‘to excavate,’’ we 
have the hard Tsade, which Gesenius describes as ‘‘equivalent 
toa dora i, pronounced with a slight sibilant or lisping sound”’ 


(Lexicon). The two sounds T and S are therefore abundantly 
suggested here as equivalents of Tsade. 


142 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


We have here also an anticipation of St. John and 
the Neo-platonists; for Ne’um, d[xl3, from which the 
anagram elides the Aleph without prejudice to its 
integrity,* is used only of God; it is ‘‘God’s Word* 
God’s Revelation.’”” Its primary meaning, “to speak 
softly,’ is in striking and suggestive antithesis to 
that of Tsarach, I. my, ‘“‘to shout aloud’’; and there 
is a keen discrimination in the use of these synonyms 
here that is freighted with prophetic import. To 
the passing multitudes that hear the Gospel proclama- 
tion (M¥3) Jesus is merely the Prophet of Nazareth 
still, and only to the inner circle of true believers who 
hear the still small Voice—to whom he is revealed 
(aN3) by the Father—is he the Christ, THE WORD 
OF GOD (Cf. Matt. 16: 17). 

There are some, perhaps, who will not find “Christ ”’ 
in the reverse of M7¥3D, who will refuse either to resolve 
Tsade (¥) into its phonetic elements or to turn from 
the language of the Old Testament to that of the New. 
For them the reverse will read bB[xl> pon, Chorets 
Ne’um—and herein is a parable of warning without 
which the message of the oracle would be incomplete. 
To the persistently perverse, to those who reject him 
as the Christ, ‘‘The Anointed Savior,’’ the final 
revelation of the ‘‘Word of God”’ will be as ‘‘ THE 
JUDGE INEXORABLE”’; for Chorets, y1n, is one 
who renders a strict decision—Cf. Joel 4: 14.T 

This third and final Proclamation of the Voice of 
the Day of Jehovah, which heralds and characterizes 
the Last Day, is therefore in full and exact accordance 
with the significance of the great events of the days of 
Belshazzar and Cyrus as a prophetic type of the end 
of the Times of the Gentiles and the dawn of a new 


* Cf. Ges., § 23, and the New Heb. D3. 
t See Brown-Driver-Briggs, 1. PAN. 


THE SECOND ADVENT 143 


era; for it hails the coming Mighty One both as the 
Chorets, the Judge who is to pronounce sentence upon 
the great antitype of Babylon, and as the Christ, the 
Royal Savior of Israel Restored. It is also in striking 
and complete antithesis to the Proclamation that 
told of the Advent of the rejected ‘‘Nazarene’’; for 
instead of that human and earthly place-name, it 
calls him by the name that above all others represents 
his place in the hierarchy of Heaven, “THE WORD 
OF GOD.” 

At first glance the title Christ would seem to apply 
to the First Advent as appropriately as to the Second, 
for we are now rightly and properly accustomed to 
calling the Savior by all the titles that express the 
manifold offices of the World’s Redeemer; but it will 
be remembered that Jesus did not permit himself 
to be familiarly known as the Messiah in the days of 
his humiliation (Matt. 16: 20, etc.), and that Christ 
as a name is not found in the Gospels—and herein 
is the reflection of a truth that is abundantly set forth 
in the written word. St. Paul declares that God 
“‘wrought’’* the full ‘‘enduement,* or anointing, of 
the strength of his might ...in Christ when he 
raised him from the dead and made him to sit at 
his right hand in the heavenly places far above all 
rule and authority and power and dominion, and 
every name that is named not only in this world, 
but also in that which is to come; and he put all 
things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to 

*evépyeay ... evapnrw ... & TH Xpicrg. Our use of the 
word energy is apt to blind us to the force of the prepositional 
prefix. This verb is used “in N. T. esp. of things spiritual. 
Hence in pass. to be possessed by an evil spirit, ot évepyouevor, 
demoniacs’’—Lidd and Scott. Here, therefore, being used ina 
good sense it sets forth the full anointing with spiritual power. 


144 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


be head over all things to the Church, which is his 
body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all’’ (Eph. 
1: 18—-23)—when he made him universal King. So 
also it is represented by the writer of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews that as our Great High-priest he was 
made perfect through his death, resurrection and 
glorification (Heb. 1: 3; 2: 17, 18; 4: 14-16; 5: 5-10; 
6: 25, etc.). This is the teaching likewise of St. 
Peter in his sermon on the Day of Pentecgst (Acts 
2: 32-36), as was long ago pointed out by Dean 
Thomas Jackson, who concludes that the Savior 
‘‘was anointed to his prophetical office at his baptism; 
but was thereby rather initiated to be, than actually 
made, Christ and Lord. Unto these two offices of 
Everlasting Priest and Everlasting King, he was not 
actually anointed or fully consecrated until his 
resurrection from the dead.’* ‘The “Anointing” of 
Christ may indeed be regarded as coincident with the 
progressive Plerosis, or ‘‘Self-Fulfilment,”’ of him 
who had “‘emptied himself ’’ of his divine consciousness 
and prerogatives at his incarnation. 

The Voice that heralds the Second Advent has there- 
fore chosen its words with unerring precision—and that 
notwithstanding the narrow confines of the phonetic 
elements at its disposal. It hails, not the Son of God 
in his human humiliation and clothed in the limita- 
tions of the flesh as ‘The Nazarene,” but the Son of 
Man exalted to all the glory of the ‘‘Word of God”’; 
and it proclaims no Jewish Messiah, but the Christ 
in whom there is neither Jew nor Gentile, the 
“Anointed ” in the full meaning of the term, ‘‘the King 
eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God’’—and the 
Judge of the Last Judgment, the “ Judge Inexorable.” 


*Works, Vol. VII., p. 368, as quoted by McClintock and 
Strong, Vol. VI., p. 135 ¢. 


THE SECOND ADVENT 145 


It will be seen also that the Second Advent Proc- 
lamation of the apocalypse of Zephaniah announces 
the Coming One by the very name and titles that are 
indicated in the Second Advent vision recorded by 
St. John in the Nineteenth Chapter of the Book of 
Revelation. 

1. “‘And I saw the heaven opened; and behold a 
white horse, and he that sat thereon is faithful and 
true (The analogy of Rev. 3: 14 joins with its own 
strangeness to forbid the construction that would 
make these two adjectives into a name—even the 
retention of “‘called,’’ which is found in some MSS., 
would not require it); and in righteousness he doth 
judge and make war. And his eyes are a flame of 
fire, and upon his head are many diadems; and he 
hath a name written which no man knoweth but he 
himself’? (Rev. 19: 11-12). This is a picture of the 
royal Judge who is supremely faithful and true and 
righteous—it is ‘“‘the Judge who renders a strict 
decision,’ “THE JUDGE INEXORABLE,”’ the 
- Chorets; and this is indeed a name or title that has 
never been specifically applied to him before and that 
accordingly “‘no one”’ has known “‘but he himself ’’— 
and it is in character with the réle he here enacts. 

2. “And he is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with 
blood; and his name is called THE WORD OF GOD ”’ 
(Rev. 19: 13)—which is literally Ne’um, as set forth 
in the Proclamation. 

3. “‘And he hath on his garment and on his thigh 
a name written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD 
OF LORDS (Rev. 19: 16). This title is of course 
the equivalent of ‘‘The Lord’s Anointed’’—the 
Christ, in the most prominent and most characteristic 
of the three applications of the term. 


x 
THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 


PORTENTS OF THE SECOND ADVENT 


HE Reverse of the Oracle of the Great Day of 
Jehovah, to which its own rubric calls atten- 
tion, contains a message that fits in with and 

confirms all the credentials of the Lost Prophecy and 
contributes new but congruous features to the picture 
of the Last Day. The unknown quantities in the 
problem of the recovery of the Lost Prophecy were 
occasioned by the two essential factors in its long 
concealment, the obscuration of the spelling of 
‘“Nazareth’’ in the speech and literature of today, 
and the corruption of the name ‘‘Nazarene”’ in the 
sacred scriptures. The soil of Nazareth has as yet 
given no answer to the spade of the explorer with 
regard to the forms of its name in Bible times, and 
neither have the sands of Egypt given us the correct 
text of Zephaniah’s oracle; but the Hebrew spelling of 
Nazareth, [nlny3, suggested by its translietrations in 
Greek and Arabic has been established beyond a 
doubt by the witness of the conversation between 
Jesus and Nathaniel, by the testimony of the pro- 
phetic name of Joshua’s city, Timnath-Serach, by 
the confession of its own old forms in the books of 
Joshua and Judges, and by the fact that it works so 
well in the recovered prophecy; and now we are to 
see that the Reverse of the Oracle of the Great Day 
of Jehovah sanctions in no uncertain way our emenda- 
146 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 147 


tion of the text of Zephaniah and also our corrobora- 
tive interpretation of the apocalyptic symbolism of 
its corruption and restoration. 

The Reverse of the Oracle is the complement of the 
Obverse. It refers to the Protevangel and points to 
the fulfilment of both senses of its double meaning in 
such a way as to reveal in the fulfilment of the pre- 
diction of the paronomasia an earnest of the fulfilment 
of the promise itself, a harbinger of the near approach 
of the final Day of Jehovah, when the Seed of the 
Woman shall grind the serpent’s head. Indeed the 
whole structure of the Reverse Reading of the Oracle 
is built upon the symbolic antagonism between Nin 
and Resh. Its first clause, construed literally, sets 
forth the effect of the erasure of Resh from the text; 
and in its figurative meaning it tells what will come to 
pass when retribution overtakes the head of the 
serpent; while the last clause puts its seal upon the 
interpretation of Nin as the Sign of Christ and re- 
veals in its illumination on the scroll of heaven the 
immediate portent of his Day. This arrangement is 
emphasized by the fact that these rival symbols, 
used as nouns and defined also by the possessives 
“his’’ and “‘my,’ are found in exactly the two most 
prominent and antithetic positions in the text and in 
just the places appropriate to the name and sym- 
bolism of each—Reshé ‘‘his head,” at the very begin- 
ning of the Reverse; and Néni, “my Nidan,’ at its 
“‘heel.’”’? Furthermore the emphasis upon them is 
underscored and their import certified by a doubly 
chiastic construction of the readings that makes each 
of these letters stand out against the background of 
a vivid word of the opposite color—Reshé against 
Gibbér, the “‘hero,”’ the “‘Mighty One,’’ a distinctive 


148 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


title of Jehovah-Messiah; and Ndni in contrast to 
Kamani, ‘‘Him who rises up against me,’’ the 
‘‘Rebel,’’ the ‘‘ Apostate.”’ 

Among the admirable features of this oracle are the 
apt and significant methods by which these symbolic 
letters are set forth—each of them three times and 
in three different ways. These methods and their 
significance can, however, be more easily considered 
after the reading of the text; and it will only be 
necessary to note here that, since the letter Resh 
is used in this prophecy with a very evident play on 
the meaning of its name and figure, it is set forth at 
the beginning of the Reverse by means of a like letter- 
play in the exceedingly appropriate phrase, Reshd 
bigemil, ‘‘His head in retribution,’ which forms the 
anagram of the otherwise unreversable word Gz2bdé6r. 
We will find too, that, in accordance with the principle 
of parallelism, the other protagonist, Nani, “My 
Nén,’’ at the end of the Reverse Reading, is also 
isolated from the text by means of a similar and 
equally suggestive resolution of its hostile back- 
ground, which is Kamani, the ‘‘ Apostate.”’ 

The Reverse of the Oracle of the Great Day of 
Jehovah falls naturally into three divisions: the 
passage that stresses the erasure of Resh at the be- 
ginning; the passage that emphasizes the restoration 
of Nin at the end; and a picture of the Day of Wrath 
by which the wrong is righted, in between. The 
middle passage is univocal, but the first passage 
admits of two constructions, and the last of four; 
and so the Great Oracle in its Reverse consists of 
seven distinct but organically interwoven predictions 
—seven lightning-flashing and thunder-echoing proph- 
ecies concerning the Last Day (Cf. Rev. Io: 3, 4). 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 149 


The question of these multiple readings of the text 
has already been considered in a previous chapter 
(Part II., Chap. VI.); and so it will be sufficient to 
note here that, like every other peculiarity of the New 
Book of Zephaniah, its use of this characteristically 
oracular construction is exceptional only in degree, 
and that these readings, all of them, are authenticated 
and sealed by the oracle itself—and by the self-evident 
fact that all their predictions, except those that fore- 
tell the Great Event and its immediate portents, 
have either been fulfilled already or else are now ful- 
filled in their very publication. These fulfilled 
prophecies of the oracle are indeed avant-couriers 
that prepare the way for the acceptance of its long- 
awaited proclamation—that proclamation concerning 
which Hope Deferred has said so often, and of late 
with such an air of finality, ‘‘Where is the promise of 
his coming? For from the day that the fathers fell 
asleep, all things continue as they were from the 
beginning of the Creation”’ (2 Peter 3: 4). 

I. THE RESH PASSAGE in its literal sense 
applies to the reading of the oracle itself and rejoices 
at the result of the cleansing of the text from its 
obscuration by Resh, while in its figurative meaning 
it points to the retribution that is to overtake the 
head of the serpent. The two constructions may 
also be distinguished with reference to their use, the 
one of the traditional and the other of the amended 
text. 

In its literal sense the Resh Passage follows the 
amended text, which is construed as follows: 


(1) pixlo non wn Sploaa wh, 
Reshé bigemtil mash Christ Ne’um, 


I50 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


‘‘' When its Resh is erased, as it ought to be, the 
Oracle will reveal CHRIST.” 


Ne’um, 083, is here construed as the denominative 
verb (Cf. Jer. 23: 3).* 

Gemil, 5103, means ‘ dealing in accordance with the 
merits of the case, recompense, whether of reward or 
punishment.’ Any action bigemil is therefore “as 
it ought to be.”’ 

In its figurative sense this clause of the oracle pro- 
- nounces the doom of the great representative of the 
Evil One; and here accordingly it retains the thumb- 
mark he left upon it—for when he tampered with the 
word of God he signed his own death warrant. With 
Resh unerased the oracle reads: 


(2) ohh pan wi sfilaaa wn, 
Reshé bigemtl mash Chorets Rém, 


‘‘Its head in retribution will the JUDGE remove 
from ROME.” 


For Mash, wv, used transitively, see Zec. 3: 9; 
and for the two accusatives with it, see Davidson, 
Heb.) Syntax, 8873 d.and'75 ¢.) \Ch Gensaz-iog: 

The Hebrew spelling of ROME is pin—it is so 
written in the Hebrew translation of the New Testa- 
ment. Its vowel letter Vav, like the smooth breath- 
ing Aleph of NE’UM, on3, the word it supplants, is 
elided in this oracle in answer to the very evident 
requirements of the multiple readings—and in strict 
conformity also with a frequent Hebrew usage.t 

Rome was founded the very year Isaiah sounded 
the first warning of the coming of the Day of Jehovah 
of Hosts and began to prophesy against the once 


* Brown-Driver-Briggs, p. 610 6. 
T Ges., §§ 23 and 24. 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES I5I 


“faithful city’? that had ‘“‘become a_ harlot’’— 
Jerusalem, which in her apostasy was a type of the 
mightier apostate that claims to be the earthly 
manifestation of the New Jerusalem (Isa. 1:2; 2:12). 
An hundred years later, in Zephaniah’s time, Rome 
was only a petty kingdom of far away Italy, and the 
prophet had doubtless never even so much as heard 
its name and could not know that Roman legionaries 
would crucify the Savior at the behest of “rebellious 
and polluted’’ Jerusalem and afterwards destroy that 
city, in accordance with the apocalyptic application 
of his prophecy of the Babylonian Captivity, and 
drive out the poor remnant of its population into 
their last long exile. Neither could he dream of the 
later guilty union of the mightiest of the world- 
empires with the Church of Christ in her apostasy, 
and certainly he knew nothing of the final retribution 
that was to be visited upon Rome, in all the applica- 
tions of that dread name. ‘These things were no 
secret, however, to the Spirit of Prophecy; and no 
one can deny that here indeed is the name of that 
greatest of the oppressors of the Jews and chief 
persecutor and defiler of the Church, written in the 
Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah just where it 
belongs, in precisely the appropriate context—as the 
supplanter of NE’UM, the Word of God, and as about 
to be visited with retribution, a retribution expressed 
in terms of the first pronouncement upon the head of 
the tempter of humanity. 

It must be remembered in this connection that 
ROME as contemplated by the Spirit of Prophecy 
that inspired Isaiah, Zephaniah, Daniel and St. 
John, is a many-headed monster, a conventional 
grouping of a succession of more or less closely related 


152 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAM 


world-powers that, having once arisen, must continue 
until the time of the end. The historian uses the 
term ‘‘Roman Empire’’ in exactly the same con- 
ventional way—and in fact, whether centered in Rome 
itself, in Byzantium, in Milan, in Ravenna, in Aachen, 
in Frankfort, in Vienna, in Paris, or in Berlin, the 
Empires of Europe have all been “‘Roman”’ in their 
heritage and inspiration and in their very law; and 
for the most part they have been Roman also in their 
names and imperial titles;* while in them all and over 
them all there has existed and still exists, though now 
reduced to a shadow of its old authority, the great 
spiritual and would-be temporal and _ all-inclusive 
Empire, specifically and intensively Roman, of the 
heir of Caesar as Pontifex Maximus, who styles him- 
self also the Successor of Peter. In the fourth year 
of this century, James Brice, the greatest contem- 
porary authority on Rome in its later manifestations, 
could write of ‘‘A Europe which in the course of the 
Nineteenth Century removed itself an immeasurable 
way from those ages of faith and imagination down 
which Caesar voyaged in the bark of Peter.’’ ‘‘The 
Successor of Caesar,’’ said he, “‘is now an Emperor 
in Germany only, as the Successor of Peter is obeyed 
in less than half of Western Christendom.’’} It is 
therefore no arbitrary and fanciful interpretation of 
history that finds in the Blond Beast by which, 
since then, the “‘ages of faith and imagination”’ have 
been so fearfully outdone, the incomparable monster 
with which Prophecy pictures the final and consum- 
mate manifestation of Rome as a merely temporal 

* Cf, James Bryce, ‘‘Holy Roman Empire,” Ed. 1917, pp. 
428 ff. and 500 ff.; and Ernest Baker, ‘‘Empire,’’ Encyc. Brit., 


11th Ed., Vol. IX., espec. pp. 347, 355 and 356. 
} ‘Holy Roman Empire,” p. 507. 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 153 


despotism. Happily the heel of the Seed of the 
Woman has now crushed, let us hope, completely, this 
most destructive and most unlooked-for manifestation, 
this resurrection of damnation as from the Bottom- 
less Pit (Rev. 17:8), of Rome in the civil realm. The 
‘Successor of Cesar’’ is no longer an Emperor even 
in Germany, and only the so-called ‘‘Successor of 
Peter,’’ who claims to be Cesar’s heir as_ well, still 
sits upon his throne—and he is a “‘prisoner’’ in his 
palace on one of the Seven Hills of the great city, the 
Vatican, the “Hill of the False Prophet.’ The 
Oracle is indeed in the very process of fulfilment as 
it comes to light from its long concealment. 

II. The SECOND SECTION of the Oracle is also 
in process of fulfilment like the first—and in what a 
frightfully unprecedented measure! Its characteriza- 
tion of the Day of Wrath is in doleful harmony with 
the parable of the erasure of Resh, for it tells of the 
cost of the final discomfiture of Rome predicted in 
the preceding clause. It reads: 

(3) pm oxi dy oo mn, 


Havah yom, v-yelék dam raham, 


‘“‘The Day is at hand, and it laps up the blood of a 
multitude.” 


Raham, ann, is found nowhere else in Hebrew 
literature, except in the name of Abraham, where its 
well-known traditional rendering, based on Gen. 17: 5, 
is ‘‘multitude’’; but it still occurs with this meaning 
in Arabic. Perhaps there is a suggestion here of a 
“‘multitude”’ of those who call themselves “ Children 
of Abraham’’—and it is in fact almost exclusively 
from the ranks of Christians, Jews and Moslems that 
the Great War has taken—and still is taking—its 


154 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


fearful toll. In the middle of 1919 it was estimated 
that over nine million men had been killed in battle 
and that the total loss of life already occasioned by 
the war was forty millions,* and since then battles 
innumerable have been fought—and the Red Terror 
still rages and spreads. 

Havah, 1, is a parallel form of Hayah, nn, “to be, 
to become, to come to pass.’ It is the root of the 
ineffable name n\n, “He who is’’—Cf. B.D.B., pp. 
217 Oli2 LOaaiecdeas 

Ill. The THIRD SECTION of the Oracle, the 
Nain Passage, contains four predictions, two of which 
foretell those final signs in the heavens that are to be 
interpreted according to the symbolism of the Corol- 
lary of the Protevangel, while the others authenticate 
these two readings of the Oracle. The text, it will 
be observed, retains the three letters of verse Thirteen 
that were included in the Rubric by which the Re- 
verse Reading was authorized. 

We will consider first the two constructions that 
authenticate the symbolism assumed in this interpreta- 
tion of the Oracle. It will be seen that they indicate 
also that the full reading of the Oracle is itself a 
portent of the final fulfilment of the burden of its 
Obverse, ‘‘The Great Day of Jehovah is near, it is 
near and hasteneth greatly.” 

The first construction of this section of the Oracle, 
which is the Fourth Prophecy of the Reverse, reads 
as follows: 


(4) Ww ( WAY D7 AIT WP WAS 


v-bér kol6 Dagah, havah yom; v-yabér 


*See Report of the Copenhagen Society for Investigation, 
etc., in the Literary Digest of June 26, 1920, p. 31. 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 155 


ker? min- Nini, ‘‘When his voice interprets 
Dagah (‘“‘ The Fishes”), the Day is at hand; and 
he will interpret it* as the equivalent of my Nin’”’ 
(i.e., as readf according to my Nun).t 


Here, in accordance with the demands of the 
parallelism, Nani, “my Nan,’ is set forth from the 
text by a letter-play, Keri min Nini, “read according 
to my WNén,” which is appropriately analogous to 
that by which Reshé, “‘his Resh,”’ was set forth in the 
first of the Seven Prophecies; and at the same time 
this letter-play reveals a new symbolic letter Koph, p, 
which is to play a most essential part in this apoc- 
alyptic presentation of the corollary of the Protevangel. 

It has been maintained that the usage of which 
Képh, >, is the notation goes back at least to the time 
of the exile—the Talmud indeed asserts that it 
originated with Moses himself; but utterly regardless 
of whether it could or could not have been employed 
by a merely human author in the days of Zephaniah— 
and without doubt the prophet knew nothing at all 

*For the omission of the pron. obj., see Davidson, Heb. 
Syntax, § 73 Rem. 5. 

{ For the participle used as obj., see Davidson, Heb. Syntax, 


§ 76; and Ges., §117. 5C. 
t In the light of this prophecy, it is evident that 734 dp) 


is the exact equivalent of bpna-y); and that we have here no 
merely accidental homophony but the complement of MIBY 


and “S"~ np is made certain by the other half of the fessera, 


so") Dpy’. For in these two halves, notwithstanding their 
brevity, the object of the New Book of Zephaniah is indicated 
with the utmost fidelity :—to ‘‘clear up’’ (993) and to “‘interpret”’ 
(WA) Nun-Ichthus-Dagah, THE SEAL OF THE LivinG Gop; and to 
‘track out’’ (3py, the denominative verb, ‘‘to follow at the heel”’ 
—See Brown-Driver-Briggs, p. 784 a) the covert significance of 
Tav-Resh, THE MARK OF THE Breast. The reading is, “‘ He shall 
seaich out Tav-Resh for me, and his voice shall interpret Nun.” 


156 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


of the Reverse Reading of his Great Oracle—this 
notation conveys such a well-known, definite and 
appropriate significance to the readers for whose 
instruction the Seven Prophecies were prepared that 
we can not disregard it as unintentional on the part 
of the Spirit of Prophecy, especially in view of the 
exceedingly apt parable that is dependent upon it. 
We will in fact find that it is abundantly authenticated 
by the Seals and the Counter-seals of the Oracle and 
by the Stigmata as well. This letter Képh is the 
sign of the Masoretic notation Keri, "p, (=p), 
which indicates that the word under consideration is 
to be read according to the equivalent found in the 
margin instead of as it is wriiten in the text.* 

The second pronouncement concerning the interpre- 
tation of this section of the Oracle is precisely the 
companion-piece that analogy demands for the first 
and is based upon it—is in fact derived from it by 
a word-play that completes the definition of the new 
symbol Képh, P. 


(5) yp yay DVM mya pa 


V-bér Koph (p) Lé’Dagah, havah yom; v-yabér 
kert (7p) min- Nini. It reads: *‘ And when he 
interprets Koph (~?) as Lé’Dagah (The False Fishes), 
the Day is at hand; and he will interpret it as con- 
trary to my Niin (as the equivalent of Resh). 

The reading of this pronouncement concerning 
Képh and the False Fishes depends upon a very 
felicitously symbolic play on the phrase Ker? min 
Nini. A false reading of this phrase, deriving Kert 
from Mp instead of from Np, reflects the real nature 


*See ‘P’’ in any Masoretic Clavis: and ‘‘Keri and Kethib” 
in any Biblical Encyclopedia. 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 157 


of the False Fishes and of Képh, ~, when it is their 
representative, as being “contrary to Ndn?z’’; and 
the Oracle puts its emphatic wnprimatur upon this 
interpretation in a most suggestive manner. For it is 


a significant fact that this same Képh, Pp, which is 


here in the Reverse of the Oracle properly construed 
as the sign and initial of the Masoretic Ker? from 
Np, is also in the Obverse the initial of the Kert from 
mip that is the key-word of the Rubric of the direct 
reading that authorizes the reading in reverse. The 
Keri of the Obverse, as we have already seen, is an 
asterisk that refers to the threatenings of the Mosaic 
Covenant against those that walk “contrary unto” 
their God; while that of the Reverse is a notation 
pointing to Nan, the sign of Him who is the Re- 
deemer from the penalties of the broken Law and its 
avenger upon those who accept not correction, the 
Christ and the Chores. 

The identity of Dagah, ‘‘The Fishes,” with Ndn, 
and of Lé’Dagah, ‘‘The False Fishes,” with Resh— 
through the mediation of Képh—having been made 
known in these two preliminary readings, the function 
of these equivalent symbols in the economy of the 
apocalypse is now to be set forth in the two remaining 
prophecies of the Oracle. For convenience of pres- 
entation we will consider these two prophecies in 
what is doubtless the reverse of their proper order 
(Cf. Matt. 24: 29, 30), numbering them, however, 
according to their true sequence. 

The final step is the restoration of Nén, its em- 
blazonment upon the scroll of heaven as the immediate 
harbinger of the Coming One, is foretold in the last 
of the Seven Prophecies. 

(7) 7D PMA AA AIT 5 prvi 


158 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


V-bérek 16 Dagah, havah-yom; v-yebhérek nuin- Nini. 
Construing p13 and p12 as respectively the Infinitive 
Absolute and the Imperfect of the causative and in- 
tensive Po’el, we read this passage: ‘* When the 
Day comes, Dagah (the Constellation of the Fishes) 
will be made to shine forth like lightning upon it; 
yea, from my Nin will the lightning-like glory be 
made to shine forth.”? In other words, Pisces, the 
Constellation of the ‘‘Fishes,’’ heretofore the last and 
most inconspicuous of the twelve Constellations of 
the Zodiac, the Nadu of Christ among the stars, is 
to shine forth as the first and most conspicuous of the 
circle, as a token of the coming again in glory of him 
who was once despised and rejected of men. . 

Let us note, first of all, that here again the equiva- 
lence of Nin and Dagah is emphatically set forth in 
the synonymous parallelism of the two clauses of the 
passages. In the Hebrew of today the name of this 
Constellation has the plural form Dagim. The form 
Dagah is well used in the Oracle, however, for it is 
usually collective, and so is equivalent to the plural 
in its application here to the two fishes of Pisces; but 
it may also be used of a single fish, as in Jonah 2: 2, 
and so may stand for the fish-letter Nin, as the double 
meaning of the passage requires. The interpretation 
of Dagah as referring to the Constellation of the 
‘“‘Fishes’’ is the unanswerable suggestion of the verb 
Barak, pra, “to flame forth like lightning’’; but the 
ideas it connotes are so foreign to the thought of this 
generation, so different from anything we have been 
accustomed to recognize as legitimate, that, not- 
withstanding its complete harmony with the context 
and with the parallel prophecy of the Savior himself 
(Matt. 24: 29, 30) when construed simply and nat- 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 159 


urally, it will doubtless appear to many to require 
some other scripture warrant, seemingly impossible 
to find. Such a warrant is at hand, however, and it 
is one that is altogether incontrovertible; for indeed 
_ Pisces has already ‘“‘flamed forth”’ in fulfilment of 
‘prophecy—as the portent of the First Advent, in 
accordance with the Vision of Balaam. 

Balaam prophesied the appearance of a mighty 
personality in Israel, but his prophecy was figuratively 
expressed—and here the figure involved is not a 
metaphor but a metonomy, for it evidently assumes a 
belief in celestial tokens. What the seer saw in his 
vision was the picture of an actual symbol and har- 
binger of the Savior: “I see him, but not now; I 
behold him, but not nigh! There shall come forth 
a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of 
Israel . . . and out of Jacob shall one have dominion ”’ 
(Num. 24:17). This has always been regarded as a 
Messianic prophecy, and it furnishes the only possible 
explanation of the expectancy of the Wise Men of the 
East, who came to Jerusalem saying, ‘“‘Where is he 
that is born King of the Jews? For we saw his star 
in its rising and are come to pay homage to him”’ 
CMatt ian). 

Now according to our interpretation of Dagah, the 
“Star out of Jacob”’ of Balaam’s vision must be re- 
ferred to Pisces, the constellation of the ‘“‘ Fishes ’’— 
and it was in fact with this constellation that the 
fortunes of Israel were associated in the ancient lore 
of thestars. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether 
“the star’’ that the Magi saw and regarded as a 
token of the birth of the Messiah was actually a 
portent seen in Pisces. It must first be understood, 
however, that the word “star,” ’acrjp, as used by the 


160 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


evangelist in the story of the Wise Men, does not 
necessarily mean a sfar in our limited sense of the term, 
but may indicate any significant sidereal phenom- 
enon. A comet ora Nova would doubtless correspond 
most fully with the modern ideal of a heavenly mes- 
senger—if indeed there is to be any such messenger— 
but of equal significance in the estimation of the 
ancient students of the stars were the conjunctions of 
the planets. In fact, the great cataclysmic events of 
history were believed to be marked by such conjunc- 
tions. Berosus, for instance, associates a universal 
flood with a conjunction of all the planets in Cancer, 
and predicts the destruction of the world by fire when 
a like conjunction takes place in Capricorn. Further- 
more, there seems to be no doubt that the opinion was 
entertained by the Jews themselves that a conjunction 
of Jupiter and Saturn—or, as they called them, of 
T'sedek, ‘“‘Righteousness,’” and Shabbathat, “The 
Sabbatic’’—in the constellation of the Fishes oc- 
curred three years before the birth of Moses and would 
occur again two years before the birth of the Messiah.* 
St. Matthew’s account of Herod’s slaughter of the 
innocents “from two years old and under according 
to the time which he had diligently enquired of the 
Wise Men”’ (Matt. 2: 16) is in full accordance with 
this expectation; it indicates clearly that the Magi had 
first seen the “‘star’’ about two years before their 
arrival in Judea, and permits the suggestion that this 
“star’? was a notable conjunction of the major 
planets. 

Now “it is all but universally allowed that Jesus 


* See reference to Miinter’s Der Siern der Weisen and quota- 
tions from Abarbanal and from the Messiah Haggadah and other 
Midrashim, in Edersheim’s ‘“‘Life and Times of Jesus, the 
Messiah,” Book II., Chap. VIII. 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 161 


was born about 5 or 6 B.C.’’* Accordingly the year 
of the first appearance of the “‘star’’ must have been 
either 7 or 8 B.C.—and the great astronomer Kepler, 
impressed by the remarkable appearance of a con- 
junction of Jupiter and Saturn that occurred in his 
own time, and with which there was associated a 
very brilliant Nova, made a thorough investigation, 
which has since been repeatedly verified, and dis- 
covered that three times in the year 7 B.C., in May, 
October and December, these two planets were in 
very close conjunction in the Constellation of the 
Fishes, and that the following year Mars, or Maadim, 
“The Bloody,” joined them in the same constellation. f 

An ephemeral star, or comet, of the Chinese 
Astronomical Tables, which, it has been calculated, 
appeared in February of the year 5 B.C., was perhaps 
the star that ‘went before’’ the Wise Men as they 
journeyed on from Jerusalem; but whatever it was that 
they accepted as a reappearance of the “star,’”’ the 
sunset revealed it to the travelers, as indicated in the 
gospel narrative, blazing in the southern heavens a 
little to the west and westering, for this was the 
direction of their road to Bethlehem—and this was 
also the direction of the constellation of the Fishes at 
that season of the year in those times. Arriving 
before Bethlehem, however, they found that the 
“star’’ did not lead them on into the walled town 
itself, which lies just off the main highway to the 
east, but ‘‘stood’’ about 30 degrees above the south- 

* New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Vol. VI., p. 158, C. 

+ The altogether too readily accepted discussion of ‘‘The 
Star of the Wise Men” in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible is 
vitiated by its failure to note the fact that the visit of the Wise 


Men did not immediately follow the first appearance of the 
*‘Star’’ but was delayed for about two years (Matt. 2: 16). 


162 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


western horizon directly over the “inn’’ where Jesus 
was born, the Khan of Chimham, which was the 
ancestral home of the House of David (cf. 2 Sam. 19: 
38-40; I Kings 2: 7), and which was not within the 
city but “beside” it (Jer. 41: 17).* 

We are therefore abundantly warranted in our 
interpretation of Dagah as Pisces, the Constellation 
of the Fishes, and in our explanation of it as the 
celestial representative of Nén and Ichthus that is to 
be made conspicuous and glorious in the Last Day to 
herald the Second Advent as it did the First. Indeed 
on the intellectual plane, as we shall see later,} this 
prediction of the Seventh Prophecy of the Reverse 
of the Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah—the pre- 
diction also of Balaam’s vision, of whose fulfilment 
the Star of Bethlehem was evidently only a fore-token 
——has already received a fulfilment as notable as 
those that greet the announcement of the predictions 
of the preceding sections of the Oracle. 

Having found one well-attested use of the picture 
writing of the constellations in this Oracle, it will 
not be difficult to recognize and appreciate a com- 
panion picture that is revealed when the text is 
construed as follows: 

(6) Op IN oO MA AT INhd pr: 
V-borek Lé’Dagah, havah yom, v-yabér Kamanti, 


‘‘ And when the False Fishes are set on fire, the Day — 
is at hand; and it will clear out my adversary.” 


*Even so Justin Martyr says that Jesus was born “in a 
certain cave very close to the village.’’ Caves are frequent in 
connection with Palestinian inns; and these Khans are usually 
just outside the villages and on the highways. The highway is 
west of Bethlehem while the Church of St. Mary is east. 

+ See Second Portent of Chap. XI. following. 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 163 


Lé’-Dagah, nxvixhb, is rendered “False Fishes” 
after the analogy of 5x5, Lo’-’el, ‘False God” 
(Deut. 32: 17, and many like examples). For bas a 
shortened form of 815, which in turn equals x5, see 
poaiiie HiOy ands2O 12, 

Kamani, *32p, is the equivalent of the Kamaz, ‘9p, 
“‘them that rise up against me,” of Psalm 18: 40 and 
49, but is more precise in that it uses the pronominal 
suffix of the verb instead of that of the noun.* ‘‘He 
who rises up against me’”’ is the “Rebel,” the “‘ Apos- 
tate,’ “‘Anti-Christ’’; and a very clear word-play 
identifies the arch-adversary who is here ‘‘cleared 
out’? with one manifestation—the one that most 
concerns the Church—of the great enemy against 
whom judgment is pronounced in the first clause of 
the Oracle, “‘As for ROME, its head the Judge will 
remove in retribution.” For Kamani7 suggests Ka- 
‘amani, ‘‘the Saturnian,’’ the “worshipper of Saturn,”’ 
an adjective formf from Ka’amanu, the name of 
Saturn and his Star among the Babylonians (Cf. Amos 
5:26 and Acts 7: 42, 43). As Saturn was the patron 
deity of Rome, the deity indeed from whom the 
original settlement was called Saturnia—a name that 
was later poetically applied to the whole of Italy— 
the chief and representative “worshipper of Saturn”’ 
here contemplated is the Roman Pontifex Maximus, 
the head of the Great Apostasy. 

Now, as we have seen, the Great Apostasy is pre- 
figured by the apostasy that Joshua and Israel of 
old were commissioned to drive out of the Promised 
Land, the religious declension of the Canaanites of 
whose abominations the typical example is the cult 


* Gesenius, § 116: 3, Rem. 
+ Gesenius, § 86: 5. 


164 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


of Cheres-Nergal-Molech at Timnath-Cheres and 
Nazareth, the perversion of primitive worship that 
no longer saw in the orb of day a suggestive parable 
of the Sun of Righteousness but offered horrible 
sacrifices to a god of the Burning 5un, the personifi- 
cation of War and Destruction, of Wrath that must 
be appeased; and it is to this same saturnine mis- 
conception of God that the Great Apostasy offers its 
sacrifices—a sad fact that is unmistakably represented 
in the symbolism of the New Book of Zephaniah, for 
Ka’amani, the worshipper of Saturn, was verily a 
worshipper of Cheres. As we have already noted (Part 
{., Chap. III.), the planet Saturn as well as the Burning 
Sun was anciently worshipped as an ikon of Cheres- 
Nergal-Molech; and in the times of Imperial Rome 
such original worshippers of ‘‘the grisly king’’ as the 
peoples of North Africa, becoming Latinized, engraved 
on their altars the name of the Roman Saturn.* 
At first glance it seems unaccountable that these 
‘‘False Fishes’ that represent his foes should ‘flame 
forth’’ in the heavens as well as his own sign, the true 
Constellation of the Fishes, in anticipation of the 
coming of the Son of Man; but the key to the under- 
standing of these portents is furnished by the words 
of the Master himself, ‘‘But immediately after the 
tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened 
and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars 
shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens 
shall be shaken, and then shall appear the sign of the 
Son of Man in heaven (Matt. 24: 29, 30). These 
words must be construed in a literal as well as in a 
figurative sense, for the figure involved in them, as in 


* See Deremberg and Saglio, Vol. IV., p. 1088 a; and Lubker’s 
Real-lexicon, p. 916 d. 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 165 


the similar Oracle of Balaam, is a metonomy and 
implies the appearance of the actual symbols. In 
view of the ideasof the times and in the light of the 
Star of Bethlehem, no merely metaphorical interpreta- 
tion is permissible, and in fact the literal meaning 
was in the foreground of the prediction, for it was 
given in answer to an inquiry concerning the ‘‘sign ’’’— 
onuetov, the outward and visible sign—of his promised 
coming (Matt. 24: 3). Interpreted in accordance 
with these words of the Master, these prophecies fore- 
tell a remarkable display of “‘falling stars’’ in the 
region of the False Fishes—perhaps even a catastrophe 
among its charted stars, the like of which only the 
novas have hitherto reported from the unknown 
depths of space, as an omen of the complete erasure of 
Resh, the final discomfiture of Anti-Christ, the clearing 
out of Kamani, the Rebel, the worshipper of Saturn; 
which is to be followed by a burst of glory in the 
Constellation of Jacob heralding the revelation of the 
Hope of Israel. 

The False Fishes are without doubt the constella- 
tions of the Sea Monster—miscalled Cetus, the 
““Whale’’—and Piscis Australis, the ‘Southern Fish,” 
which skirt the southern border of Pisces—and with 
them, as we shall see presently, there is also associated 
the Zodiacal goat-fish Capricornus. Lying below the 
Eclyptic, they are, according to the lore of the stars, 
in the nether realm of evil, the Sea Monster represent- 
ing the rapacious world-empires—as does the Apoc- 
alyptic ‘‘Beast from the Sea’’—and the Southern 
Fish, which is pictured as being sustained by the 
stream of water poured from the urn of Aquarius, or 
“Ramman the Lord of the triple Crown,’’* represent- 

* See Encyclopedia Brit., 11th Ed., Vol. XXVIII., p. 994, C. 


166 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


ing Babylon the Great, or the beast with the horns of 
a lamb and the voice of a dragon (Rev. 13: 11 ff.). 
Cetus, under the evil dominance of whose head 
Aries becomes the astral equivalent of Resh, the 
symbol of the Old. Serpent, qualifies for this part 
through the fact that it pictures the sea-monster of 
the myth of Perseus and Andromeda (So Aratus in 
The Phainomena, the one Greek authority quoted by 
St. Paul—Acts 17: 28), and by the further fact that it 
issues from the very Inferno of Infernos, the South Pole 
of the Galactic Universe—marked by the star Diphda, 
or Deneb Kaitos, which, though it is the Beta of the 
Constellation, is nevertheless its most prominent star. 
Képh is represented by the other False Fish and its 
Zodiacal sponsor; and it would be difficult to devise 
a more faithful representation of the Papacy, with 
its claims to both spiritual and temporal supremacy, 
than this combination of Aquarius and Piscis Australis 
tied together by the stream from the urn of the Water- 
carrier, as the Fishes that represent the true Church 
are tied together by the thongs of Nodus; for the 
triple crown is the emblem of the temporal power of 
the Roman Sea that nourished its spiritual preten- 
sions so long and that is still regarded by the dominant 
Ultra-montanists as absolutely essential to their 
system, while the one overshadowing star in the jaw 
of the Southern Fish well portrays the truly absolute 
spiritual authority of the sovereign and infallible 
pontiff. Consistently with this view, the Southern 
Fish may be regarded as the sidereal presentment of 
Dagon,* the fall of whose head and hands before the 
Ark of the Covenant is in symbolic harmony with the 


* So Dupins as quoted by Serviss, ‘‘ Astronomy with the Naked 
ELVES 132, 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES 167 


prediction here set forth concerning this constellation. 
It is therefore strikingly significant that the one great 
star of this constellation is called ‘‘ Fomalhaut,” ‘‘The 
Mouth of the Fish,’”’ which may be rendered in Hebrew 
Lo‘-Dagah, nis-yS, for this is a close word-play upon 
the name given the Constellation in the Oracle, and 
substituting in it for Dag, “Fish,’’ its equivalent in 
the Oracle, the fish-letter Nan, the name of this star 
becomes 7395, La‘anah, or “‘ Wormwood,” which is the 
name of the ‘‘fallen star’’ of Rev. 8: 10-11, and which 
is also a synonym of Résh, ‘‘a bitter poisonous herb,”’ 
and an equivoke of Resh the supplanter of Nan the 
Sign of the Christ. Fomalhautis one of the four Royal 
Stars that anciently marked the four corners of the 
heavens; and in consonance with its apocalyptic 
symbolism, it stood for the North, though in reality 
it is the southernmost of the four. 

As a companion to the parable of the word-play upon 
Lo’Dagah, Fomalhaut-Lo‘Dagah-La‘anah, ‘Worm- 
wood,’’ the “fallen star’’ of the Southern Fish, we 
find in Cetus, the other False Fish, a dramatic proph- 
ecy to the same effect—an earnest, as it were, of the 
fulfilment of the Sixth Prophecy of the Reverse of the 
Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah and of the words 
of the Master; for it is in this constellation that the 
“wonder star’’ Mira, the most notable and the first 
discovered of the variables, blazes up and fades away 
like a nova, usually oscillating between the third and the 
seventh magnitudes in a cycle of 331 days, but some- 
times unexpectedly flashing forth and becoming the 
brightest star of the constellation—as in December 
1906—and then disappearing and continuing invisible 
unaccountably—as once in the Seventeenth Century, 
when for four years it seemed to be blotted out of 
existence. 


168 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


The parallelism of this chapter of the picture- 
writing of the stars with the Oracle of the Great Day 
of Jehovah is completed and the identification of 
‘The Fishes’”’ with Ndén and of ‘The False Fishes”’ 
and their Zodiacal sponsors (Aries, Aquarius and 
Capricornus) with Resh and its equivalent Képf is 
confirmed by the relationship to these constellations 
that was assigned in the ancient lore of the stars to 
the three planets whose conjunction marked the 
First Advent. As we have already seen, the con- 
stellation of Aries was the “house’’ of Mars. In its 
right and proper aspect, as represented by its northern 
paranatellon Perseus, it was the home of the self- 
devoting Hero; but in its perversion, as represented 
by its southern paranatellon, the Head of Cetus, it 
was “‘the house” of the pseudo-hero, the protector 
who becomes an exploiter, the tyrant, the King—of 
Mars “The Bloody,” which the Jews call Maadim 
and which we have identified with Ares- Cheres- Nergal, 
the god of the ancient typical apostasy. ‘The signif- 
icance of Aries as in its evil-aspect the equivalent of 
Resh, the symbol of the Great Adversary and the 
mark of his fearful avators, the apocalyptic beasts of 
the line of Babylon, is further emphasized by the fact 
that the Zodiacal Ram was the heraldic token* of the 
Babylonian dynasty of the Seleucids and so of Anti- 
ochus Epiphanes, the most venomous and blasphemous 
of the enemies of the people and religion of Jehovah 
and the typical anti-Christ of the Book of Daniel. 

In harmony with this token of the stellar apocalypse, 
the constellations of the goat-fish Capricornus and of 
Aquarius, or of Ramman the Thunderer, the wearer 
of the triple crown who pours from his urn the stream 


“Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed., Vol. XXVIII., pp. 
993, 4, 7- 


THE SEVEN PROPHECIES | 169 


that sustains the False Fish Piscis Australis with its 
false representative of the North, Fomalhaut or 
Lo‘Dagah, the fallen star ‘‘ Wormwood,’ are found to 
be ‘‘houses’’? dominated by SATURN, the star of 
Ares- Cheres- Ninib, the alter ego of Nergal—and this 
identifies the wearer of the triple crown and also 
his lesser brother on the Bosporos with Ka’amanz, 
“The Worshipper of Saturn,’’? and Kamant, “the 
Apostate,’’ whose initial and symbol is Képh, the 
equivalent of Resh. Furthermore, in reinforcement 
of the reference of this picture to the False Church, 
Saturn, which is in reality the Szxth of the planets 
as we count them now, was regarded as the Seventh 
in the old and mistaken geo-centric system handed 
down by Ptolemy; and its Hebrew name was ac- 
cordingly Shabbathat, “‘The Sabbatic’’—which was 
also appropriately the name of the most shameful 
and preposterous of the false Messiahs that have 
afflicted Jewry f in accordance with the warnings of the 
rejected Nazarene. (Matt. 24:5, 23, 26; John 5: 43.) 

The symbolism is completed by the Hebrew name 
of Jupiter, the planet regarded as regnant over 
Pisces, ‘‘The Fishes,’’ the constellation of Israel and 
the representative of Nin on the scroll of heaven; 
for it is Tsedek or ‘‘ Righteousness.”’ 

The réle played by the constellations Dagah and 
Lo’ Dagah remind us of Israel’s First Battle of Arma- 
geddon, to which the clue of St. Matthew’s Lost 
Prophecy has already directed our attention as like- 
wise a foreshadowing of the mighty conflict of the 
Last Great Day—and here, as everywhere, we see 
that there is a studied harmony, even in outer form, 


t Sabbathaz Zebi, born at Smyrna in 1626 and died a renegade, 
a pervert to Mohammedanism in 1676, 


170 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


that puts the seal of unity upon all the types and 
shadows of God’s written revelation. The parallels 
between the story of that ancient type of the Great 
Armageddon and the Prophecies of the Reverse of the 
Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah are clearly indi- 
cated and emphasized by the familiar method charac- 
teristic of both. 

Kamani, “‘The Apostate,’’ is identified in the Oracle 
by the word-play Ka’amani, “The Worshipper of 
Saturn’’; and his type in the Book of Judges is the 
Canaanite power that centered in Nazareth, the 
northern shrine of Cheres-Molech-Saturn, whose 
apostate worship is characterized by the plays on its 
name, Charisoth and Charishoth, that picture it as 
‘“‘The Place of the Sorceries of the Gentiles and of 
their burnt offerings to Cheres-Molech-Saturn.”’ 

In the Armageddon of the Last Great Day, as it is 
foretold in the Oracle, itis Ne’um, “‘THE WORD OF 
GOD” (Cf. Rev. 19: 13), who, as the ‘Judge In- 
‘exorable,” will flash forth his “lightnings,’”’ Barak 
(pk3), upon the apostate and cause the Day to lap 
unto the blood of a multitude. So in the ancient 
typical Armageddon, Deborah, by word-play Debar- 
yah, mas, ‘The Word of Jehovah,” was the name of 
the “Judge’’ who inspired Israel to rise up against 
Jabin and Sisera and sent Barak, pia, “The 
Lightning,’’ and the ten thousand heroes of Zebulon 
and Naphtali, rushing down upon them from the 
heights of Tabor, which tradition identifies with the 
Mount of the Transfiguration. The Oracle of Zeph- 
aniah appeals to the portents of the stars; and in the 
Song of Deborah we read: 


‘‘From heaven fought the stars, 
From their courses they fought against Sisera aes 5320, 27); 


———— 


AT 


THE SEVEN SEALS 


A DRAMATIZATION OF THE PROTEVANGEL 


HE authentication of an oracle as unusual as 
this Reverse Reading must be correspondingly 
outstanding—and the Spirit of Prophecy has 

left unused no means that could be employed to that 
end. No one can fail to appreciate (1) the thorough 
self-consistency of this Reverse Reading in all its 
Seven Prophecies; (2) its striking accordance with 
the message of the Obverse; (3) its harmonious 
elaboration of the symbolism of the Protevangel, 
the very symbolism illustrated in the loss and re- 
covery of the true meaning of the Oracle of the Great 
Day of Jehovah itself; and (4) its unquestionable 
confirmation in the fulfilment of so many of its pre- 
dictions, of those that have to do with its own dis- 
covery and interpretation, and of the two that are 
preliminary to its main action—the destruction of the 
Blond Beast, and the Great War that has already 
lapped up the blood of such a multitude. 

It will be well, however, to consider also those less 
obvious evidences of design that are indeed worthy 
of the “mind of the Spirit,’’ but that can be appreci- 
ated only as they are studied—and that must reward 
study with a clearer conception of the truth. 

The symbolic antagonists, Nén and Resh, are 
contrasted in the Oracle three times and in three 
different ways; and the rebellion of Resh is finally 

171 


L722 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


resolved through the mediation of Képh. The 
symbolism is therefore set forth seven times—in 
Seven Seals, so to speak, that, by the perfection, 
propriety and consistency of the devices engraved 
upon them, authenticate the multiple readings of the 
text, the Seven Prophecies of the Oracle. These 
Seven Seals present in four acts a three-fold dramatiza- 
tion of the Protevangel in its application to the final 
phase of the great conflict of the ages, the deadly 
contest between the Church and the World. The 
primary presentation of this threefold drama is found 
in the first and last acts, the other two being interludes 
—portents. The drama begins with a picture of the 
now historic aggression of Resh, and ends with a 
prophecy of the triumph of Nén, of which the portents 
of the interludes show the imminence. 

The first interlude is a miniature presentation of 
the whole drama, which is enacted in the minutie of 
the text of Scripture as a portent for the watchful eye 
of the Church; while the second promises to speak its 
warning through the mighty constellations of the 
heavens—blazing oracles that even the careless World 
must heed. The first is in fact a replica of the New 
Book of Zephaniah itself, while the second is a ref- 
erence and appeal to the great and original Apocalypse 
of the Stars. 

The protagonists of this dramatization are the 
letters Nin and Resh used as nouns; and, as has 
already been noted, they are set off for this use by 
means of characteristic pronominal suffixes, Reshé, 
“His Resh,”’ and Nint ‘“‘My Nan’; and they are 
emphasized by being placed in the commanding 
positions in the text—positions, too, that correspond 
with their significance as respectively ‘‘head’”’ and 


THE SEVEN SEALS 173 


‘‘heel’’—Reshé being the first word of the oracle and 
Nuni the last. The emphasis is heightened by the 
device of setting each of the protagonists upon a back- 
ground of the opposite color—each stands out indeed 
against the very word most appropriately used to 
characterize his adversary, Reshé, “His Resh,” 
against Gibbdér, the ‘‘ Mighty One,” the divine title 
of the Messiah in the Proclamation of the Voice of 
the Day of Jehovah, and Nini, “‘My Nin,” against 
Kamani, ‘Him who rebels against me,” the Apostate, 
by word-play “‘the Worshipper of Saturn.” The 
antithesis between these representations of the great 
antagonists is the more marked because of the exact 
parallelism maintained between them in all things 
save in those distinctive points that constitute the 
action of the drama. ‘They are of necessity taken, 
both of them, from the words of the text that form 
their backgrounds, the characteristic titles of their 
adversaries; but each comes forth in such a way as 
to enact its proper réle in the presentation of the 
Protevangel. 

The fulfilment of the Protevangel is necessarily 
presented in a drama of two great acts, The Wounding 
of the Heel of the Hero, and The Retribution upon the 
Head of the Serpent. 


I. THE FIRST ACT—-THE WOUNDING OF THE HEEL OF 
THE HERO 


In one scene = The FIRST SEAL, Reshé bigemil. 


The drama of the Protevangel is of course enacted 
here in such a way as to carry a message concerning 
the Second Advent, for that is the purpose of the 
Reverse Reading in which it is found. The Word of 
God is not pictured here, therefore, as wounded in 


174 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


the person of Jesus of Nazareth on Calvary, but as 
wounded in his greater body, the Church, on one of 
the seven hills of Babylon the Great. Reshé, is ex- 
hibited here as the Head of the Great Apostasy, or 
“Falling Away’’ (II. Thes. 2: 3), as the initial of an 
attempted inversion of Gibbér, 13, the ‘Mighty 
One,” the characteristic title of God intervening with 
power and authority in the affairs of earth, Jehovah- 
Messiah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The 
Evil One, therefore, actually takes as his initial, his 
mark, the last letter of Gibbér—LITERALLY 
WOUNDS THE HEEL OF THE HERO—and in 
this attempted appropriation and perversion of the 
title that expresses the authority of Christ, there is 
indeed only too faithfully pictured his impious at- 
tempt to transform the Kingdom of Christ, who rules 
by truth alone, into a Roman despotism, an empire, 
under a triple-crowned “‘Vicar’’ who finds his ideal 
of a Gibbér in Nimrod (Gen. 10: 8, 9) and in Cesar 
instead of in the meek and lowly Nazarene. 

Happily we can call St. Francis of Assisi as well as 
Martin Luther to witness that his seeming triumph 
on the Vatican is as essentially futile as was that on 
Calvary; and the Oracle itself adds the reassurance of 
its prophetic pronouncement. A real reversal of 
Gibbér being, as the parable demands, altogether im- 
possible, its anagram is formed by a play on the letters 
of the word, by which Gzbbér, 133, becomes 33°45, 
Reshé bigemil, ** His head—in retribution.” 


II. THE FIRST PORTENT—WRIT LITTLE FOR THE CHURCH 


An interlude in two scenes: 


Scene I = The SECOND SEAL, Rém. 
Scene 2 = The THIRD SEAL, Ne’um. 


THE SEVEN SEALS 175 


At the close of the first section of the Reverse 
Reading of the Oracle, the antagonists are seen in 
their own proper forms as letters contending for the 
possession of the master-word of the Prophecy, the 
name of the Nazarene and the symbol of his Church. 
Here in their proper form they are also revealed in 
their true significance; for when Num is restored to 
the text, we find in its logical place in the oracle the 
divine name of the glorified Seed of the Woman, 
Ne’um, o[sl3, the ‘Word of God,” of which Nun is 
the initial and sign; but with Resh supplanting Nun, 
as in the corrupted Masoretic text, the place of Ne’um, 
the ‘‘Word of God,” is usurped by Rom, nih, the 
name of the consummate incarnation of the Old 
Serpent, the synonym of Empire—the World at its 
worst, of which Resh is the initial and sign. 

Resh, as we have seen, supplanted Num in the text 
of the Oracle about the time of the Crucifixion—and 
now the erasure of Resh and restoration of Nun has 
the force of a portent for all who read the Word of 
God. 


II. THE SECOND PORTENT——-WRIT LARGE FOR 
THE WORLD 


An interlude in two scenes: 


Scene 1 = The FOURTH SEAL, Lo’Dagah. 
Scene 2 = The FIFTH SEAL, Dagah. 


At the beginning of the last section of the Oracle, 
the great contest is shown as it is about to be set 
forth in the picture-writing of the heavens that all 
nations and peoples and languages may see and under- 
stand it—a portent for the world at large. This 
picture-writing was traced on the heavens by the 


176 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


finger of the Creator, and its suggestive outlines have 
never been seriously misconstrued by any of his 
earthly children, however sadly its true significance 
may have been lost. Its revelation was given to the 
race in its receptive childhood,* and its interpretation 
is to be found in the cosmic myths the first men wove 
around its figures as they tried to solve the mysteries 
of the wonderful world in which they found themselves 
—its origins and goals, its good and its evil—dreaming 
with mingled hope and fear of life and death and 
things to come, and listening to the voice of God in 
the cool of the evening, to the still small voice in the 
silence and darkness of the night, under the stars. 
It is the first written revelation, the first apocalypse; 
and like its Biblical redactions, it does indeed foretell 
the future, not, as the inevitable perversions pretend, 
the fixed destinies of individuals or peoples—for there 
is no such thing in God’s universe—but the major 
movements in the out-working of the Great Salvation 
in accordance with the laws of growth and under the 
husbandry of all the free-agencies involved, among 
which, transcendant, but none the less law-abiding, 
works the divine purpose of Him who, through the 
over-rulings of his providence and through the in- 
fluence of his Holy Spirit, “bringeth his own devices 
to pass.” 


*See W. F. Warren, The Earliest Cosmologies, pp. 109 ff. As 
to whether at this late date we are warranted in attempting to 
construe this early revelation, we have every reason to believe 
that, so far as its fundamental constructions are concerned, the 
picture-writing of the stars ‘‘underwent no essential change” 
(so F. von Oeffele in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and 
Ethics, Vol. XII., p. 57, b.) ‘from the time of the earliest attempts 
to draw upa calendar—through the period of the Sumerians and 
Akkadians—to the days of Kepler.” 


THE SEVEN SEALS Ag 


The chapter of the Stellar Apocalypse to which 
Zephaniah appeals in this portent is its version of the 
Corollary of the Protevangel. Here Resh and its 
equivalent Koph are appropriately represented by 
the constellations of the “‘False Fishes’’ (Lo’Dagah), 
Resh itself by Cetus, the Monster of the Deep that _ 
issues from the southern or infernal pole of the Galactic 
Universe, and Koph by the Southern Fish, the picture 
of Dagon, whose lone bright star is ‘‘The Mouth of the 
Fish,’ Fomalhaut, Lo‘DAGah, La‘anah, or the fallen 
star ‘‘Wormwood,” the southern star that poses as 
the representative of the North; while Num is pre- 
sented in the guise of Dagah, or Pisces, the Constella- 
tion of the Fishes, which of old was assigned to Jacob, 
and in which the Wise Men of the East, in accordance 
with the prediction of Balaam, found “the star” 
that led them to the feet of the infant Redeemer. 
The erasure of Resh, the Oracle tells us, will be heralded 
by the “‘falling stars’’ of the False Fishes, while in the 
true ‘‘Fishes’”’ of Pisces will appear that sign of the 
Son of Man, Nun, emblazoned on the scroll of heaven, 
by which, as the Savior himself made known to us, 
the stars in their joy are to signal to the redeemed 
Earth a token of the Presence of the Victorious 
Redeemer. 

These False Fishes are, however, paranatellons; 
and their effect on the institutional life of earth is 
represented in the stellar apocalypse through their 
dominance of the corresponding Zodiacal signs and 
constellations. Accordingly, as the drama is enacted 
in the heavens, it is the Zodiacal Ram, the ancient 
“Leader (Resh) of the year,’’ whose southern para- 
natellon is the head (Resh) of Cetus, that plays the 
part of RESH; while the Water-carrier, which is the 


178 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


Zodiacal sponsor of the head (Koph) of the Southern 
Fish and of its one great star, and which in fact over- 
shadows the whole of that constellation, and also 
the fish-tail of Capricornus, represents KOPH in the 
action of the apocalypse. It will be necessary of 
course to reserve for the less restricted limits of a 
separate publication the full discussion of this astral 
presentation of the great contest of the ages, but 
perhaps it will be possible to set forth here an in- 
telligible picture of its main features. 

In any moving circle the first follows hard upon the 
last; but in the ceaseless round of the year as repre- 
sented by the circle of the Zodiac, the ‘‘head ”’ actually 
““wounds’”’ the “‘heel’’—a fact that is suggested, un- 
wittingly no doubt on the part of its human orig- 
inators, in the ancient symbol of time often seen in 
classic presentations of Saturn, or Chronos, a serpent 
grasping its tail in itsmouth. Little by little, because 
of the Precession of the Equinoxes, the “‘Sign’”’ of the 
Ram has bitten into the “‘ Constellation ”’ of the Fishes; 
for the signs—each an arc of the Eclyptic of thirty 
degrees—following the lead of the Vernal Equinox, 
are moving backward in relation to the fixed stars of 
the constellations, one degree in a little over three 
score years and ten. As originally conceived, of 
course, the signs and constellations were identical; 
and Taurus, the Winged Cherub, whose symbol was 
represented on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the 
Covenant, and whose constellation includes the seven 
rain-dispensing Hyades and the seven Halcyon 
Pleiades (Job 38: 31), was then the leader of the 
Circle of the Zodiac; and according to the analogy 
of subsequent astronomical usage, and in accordance 
also with consistency in chronology, the sign of Taurus 


THE SEVEN SEALS 179 


ought to have retained its primacy on down the ages; 
but in the earliest extant records, the Ram had assumed 
its place and become the leader, the Resh, of the 
signs. 

It must be understood in this connection that, since 
they represent the impact upon human life of the 
mutually antagonistic influences of the Spirit of the 
Heavenly Father and the spirit of the Father of Lies, 
the Zodiacal figures are, as it were, houses divided 
against themselves, being in their ideal acceptances 
symbols of the divine interventions in behalf of fallen 
humanity and in their perversion counterfeits of these 
same symbols and witnesses to the Satanic inter- 
ferences in our despite. Accordingly Aries, which in 
its rightful significance is the Little Lamb of the 
Heavenly Hosts who is later to manifest himself as 
the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, is in its perverted 
aspect the Ram-demon Kingu-Abaddon-A ppolyon,* 
the leader of the rebel hordes of Tiamat-Chaos. More- 
over, since during all the centuries that the Equinox, 
the Index of the Ages, has been moving westward 
over the stars of Pisces the paranatellons, which 
picture the incarnations and show the seeming rela- 
tive vantage or disadvantage of the two opposing 
forces, have been, on the South, the rampant sea- 
monster Cetus, and on the North his helpless victim 
the chained maiden Andromeda, it is evident that 
in the celestial oracles as in the earthly records of 
these centuries evil is presented as ruthlessly aggres- 
sive and to all appearances overwhelmingly dominant; 
and so Aries, the ‘‘Prince’”’ or ‘‘Head’”’ (Resh) of the 
Signs, encroaching upon Pisces, the Fishes (um), the 


*See Rev. 9: 11 etc; and The Babylonian Creation Tablets, 
bey ri4 ff.) ete. 


180 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


‘“‘Heel’’ of the Constellations of the Zodiac, can only 
be construed as representing the “Head” of the 
Zodiac in its draconian aspect wounding the ‘ Heel”’ 
of the celestial Hero. 

The “wounding ”’ of the ‘heel ’’ or last of the Zodiacal 
constellations, Pzisces,-or Dagah, the “Fishes’’—the 
erasure of N U N written on the scroll of heaven—by 
this usurping “‘head,’”’ or RES H, of the signs, began 
in the days of the first Antiochus (280 to 269 B.C.), 
who adopted it as his heraldic token, and just at the 
time that Rome, having completed and consolidated 
her conquest of Italy (272 B.C.), started out on that 
fateful career of foreign conquest that made her the 
age-long mistress of the world. The cycle of the 
Precession of the Equinoxes is completed in 25730 
years, and so the Vernal Equinox passes through the 
thirty degrees of a sign in 2144 years. Consequently 
at the time of the First Advent, or the coming of the 
Suffering Savior, the encroachment of the sign of the 
Ram upon the constellation of the Fishes had just 
begun to be noticeable, and the first point of Aries 
was then appropriately marked by the Alpha of 
Pisces—for the Arabs have given us a name for this 
star that completes the prophetic message of this 
crucial passage of the picture-writing of the heavens 
and reinforces it with, as it were, an apt quotation from 
the greatest of the prophets. 

The classic name of this star, Nodus, the ‘‘ Knot,” 
points out the fact that, though it is in their constella- 
tion, it does not belong to the Fishes themselves, but 
stands for the knot that unites the two thongs that 
bind them. Alpha Piscium represents, therefore, 
neither Christ nor his true people, but the union of 
the forces that have oppressed them (Cf. Luke 23: 7; 


THE SEVEN SEALS 181 


Acts 4: 27). Well, therefore, has the Spirit of Proph- 
ecy added to its Latin name WNodus, the Semitic 
name El-Rescha, ‘‘The Slaughterer.’”’ And so now, 
as the majestic and long unrecognized movement of 
the Precession of the Equinoxes—a token indeed of 
the inscrutable providence of God—enacts in our | 
retrospect vision of the stars the apocalyptic drama 
of the wounding of the “heel’”’ of the Messianic Hero 
by the ‘‘head”’ of the Serpent, or the symbolic erasure 
of Nun and its supplanting by Resh, it also pictures 
the true significance of that supreme tragedy and 
shows us the Sign of Aries in its rightful aspect as the 
symbol of Love’s redeeming sacrifice, the Little Lamb 
bearing the Cross of the Easter Equinox toward 
Alpha Piscium—and on from Alpha to Omega—and it 
utters in Reason’s ear an unmistakable voice that 
speaks in the very words of familiar scripture: ‘‘He 
was brought asalamb to the slaughterer’’* (Isa. 53 :7;3 
Acts 8 :32 cf. John I : 29, 36). 

Nineteen centuries have now gone by since Calvary 
and the seeming triumph of the Serpent over the 
Suffering Savior—only a seeming triumph, for, in 
accordance with the prophetic meaning of the name 
by which he was rejected, the “Nazarene” (Moy3"1) 
left behind him an empty sepulcher as a token of the 
glorious victory won from seeming defeat—and all 
this time the enmity between the Serpent and the 
Seed of the Woman has been exemplified in his cease- 
less conflict with the Church, the body of Christ, 
which indeed he has not only persecuted but even 


* The Masorites punctuate this word N30; but it could with 
equal or even greater propriety be pointed NAD and rendered 


“‘slaughterer’’—which is in keeping with ‘‘shearer’”’ in the 
parallel clause. 


182 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


seemed to overcome and transform into the likeness 
of his own consummate incarnation; and accordingly 
the Sign of the Ram has continued to encroach upon 
the Constellation of the Fishes, until at last the Cross 
of the Equinox has moved back through its stars the 
full measure of a sign—from their Alpha to their 
Omega. The Resh of the Serpent, it would seem, 
has completely supplanted the Nun of Christ and 
taken possession of the stars of its constellation. So 
it would seem—and so would some interpret appear- 
ances in the world today and find in them abundant 
evidence of the “‘failure of Christianity ’’—but in 
reality it is the very opposite that has come to pass. 
The “tables have been turned’’ in the heavens in 
token of the coming “‘Mutation”’ on earth that will 
reveal the triumph of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Pisces, which hitherto has always been regarded 
as the last of the constellations of the Zodiacal Circle, 
is now of necessity universally acknowledged to have 
become the first, “‘the precession of the equinoxes 
having brought it into the position originally occupied 
by the first sign.’’* It is true that this first sign is 
still called by the name of Aries, the Ram; but now 
its first point, ‘the Greenwich of the Skies from whose 
longitude the right ascension of all the stars is reck- 
oned,’’ and all its other points as well, must be identi- 
fied by the stars of the Fishes. 

True to the demands of the prophetic symbolism, 
the Constellation of the Fishes has indeed become only 
the more glorious as the final result of the age-long 
aggression of the Sign of the Ram; but the picture is 
not yet complete; for the Sign of the Fishes as well 
as their Constellation must be seen to share in the 

*G. P. Serviss, Astronomy with the Naked Eye, p. 138. 


THE SEVEN SEALS 183 


victory—and that phase of the picture is presented 
in a like contest between Pisces and Aquarius, a con- 
test that is indeed very much like that between Pisces 
and Aries, but that is by no means a mere duplicate 
of it. Artes in its perversion is the Zodiacal embodi- 
ment of the False Fish Cetus, the Monster of the 
Deep, the Beast from the Sea. It represents the ’ 
hostility of the World to the truth of God, the hostility 
of the World when it is dominated by the Spirit of 
Evil. Its characteristic manifestation is seen in the 
great exploiting world-powers, and its typical activity 
is exemplified supremely in the crucifixion of the 
Master himself and in the persecution of his Church. 
It is represented in the Oracle of the Great Day of 
Jehovah by Resh, the initial of ROME. Aquarius, 
on the other hand, or Ramman, the wearer of the 
triple crown, is the Zodiacal sponsor of the False Fish 
Piscis Australis, whose lucida is Fomalhaut, or 
Lo‘Dagah, the fallen star ‘Wormwood.’ It stands 
for the Apostasy that is represented in the Oracle by 
Koh, the initial of Kamani, and, by word-play, of 
Ka’ amani, “the worshipper of Saturn’’—and, as 
we have seen, the symbol of Aguarius, the Water- 
carrier, is often simply a water-jar, a Kaph. 

The contest between Pisces and Aquarius is ac- 
cordingly a companion picture to that between Pisces 
and Aries, but it is in the reverse order. The times 
have changed—the Head of the Serpent has been 
crushed, and the principles represented’ by the benefi- 
cent aspect of the Zodiac and by Pisces as the Sign 
of Christ have now become openly victorious. In 
this picture, therefore, the Sign of the Fishes over- 
runs the Constellation of the Water-carrier—and 
there is no turning of the tables against the victorious 


184 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


invader. Indeed the precession of the equinoxes, 
which in the first picture finally makes the seemingly 
overshadowed Fishes the premier constellation of the 
Zodiac, in the second demotes the vanquished Water- 
carrier to the last place in the circle—it is assimilated 
to Nun, it has become the ‘“‘heel” of the Zodiac. 
Neither has the Sign of the Fishes lost its identity 
as did the Sign of the Ram: for the path of the Sun 
through Aquarius is very short, while Pisces extends 
through fifty degrees of longitude, and so two-thirds 
of the points of its sign are still marked by its own 
stars—and its first point will be so marked for a T HO U- 
SAND YEARS! Accordingly on the North Andro- 
meda, the Church in Chains, gives place to Pegasus, 
the winged charger that evidences the Presence of 
his unseen Rider, while on the South Cetus the sea- 
monster is succeeded by Piscis Australis, the Church 
that has been conformed to the world but that is now 
to be transformed—assimilated to Nun, as indicated 
by the conquest of its Zodiacal sponsor Acquarius— 
and restored to favor in the universal kingdom of the 
Prince of Peace. And in harmony with the vision as 
already unfolded, just as the Easter Equinox, which 
once led the Little Lamb to ‘the Slaughterer,’’ 
Alpha of the Fishes or Nodus the “ Knot”’ that binds 
them, brings him now at last to the Omega of the 
constellation, which marks the end of the thong that 
symbolizes subjection, and, leaving behind the last 
stars of the Sea-monster and the Chained Maiden,. 
enters the region of the Second Fish of Pisces, its 
fellow, the New Year’s Equinox, which ushers in the 
Feast of Tabernacles (Cf. Zech. 14:16), points to 
the stars of the Lion—among which gleams the 
Sickle poised over the heads of the Hydra, or “the clus- 


THE SEVEN SEALS 185 


ters of the vine’’—and to the ‘‘ White Cloud”’ of Coma 
Berenices (Cf. Rev. 14 : 14-20). 

To the eye of the mind, therefore, Lo’Dagah, the 
‘“‘False Fishes’’—Cetus, the Dragon of the Deep, 
with its wonder-star Mira, and the ‘‘Southern Fish’’ 
with its lone star ‘‘Wormwood’’—have already 
fallen from their places; while Dagah, the ‘‘ Fishes ’’— 
Nun emblazoned among the stars—‘‘flashes forth”’ 
in glory. The Sign of the Son of Man is even now 
in the heavens, and only awaits the hour of its un- 
veiling, when it is to be illuminated and made re- 
splendent to the eyes of all, ‘“‘as the lightning cometh 
forth from the East and is seen even unto the West”’ 
(Watts 24 27): 


IV. THE LAST ACT—RETRIBUTION UPON THE HEAD OF 
THE SERPENT 
In two scenes: 


Scene I = The sixTH SEAL, Ker? (7p) min Nunt. 
Scene 2 = The SEVENTH SEAL, Keré (Sp) min Nunt. 


In accordance with the pronouncement made in 
Reshé bigemil, ‘‘ His head—in retribution,’’ vengeance 
for the wounding of the ‘‘heel’’ (the last letter) of 
Gibbér, “‘the Hero,” at the beginning of the Oracle, 
is visited upon the “head” of Kamani, ‘39p, “the 
Rebel,’ “‘the Apostate,’ at the end = upon its 
initial Koph, which, as the pictograph of a head, is a 
synonym of Resh. The “head’’ of evil is utterly 
destroyed—and this is in accordance with the pro- 
phetic meaning of the name of the letter Koph, which 
is, as derived from I. 5p, ‘‘to strike off’ (in Arabic, 
“to decapitate’’), “‘todestroy utterly ’’ (Cf. Job 19:26). 
This name, however, as derived from II. 5p), means 


186 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


“te go around,” “‘to complete the circle’’ (Cf. Isa. 
29: 1)—to go back, therefore, to the place from which 
it started—and here indeed is a beautiful prophecy 
that accords with the truth of God, who in wrath 
remembers mercy and all whose chastisements are 
intended for correction to such as will receive it, a 
prophecy that fits in with the specific teaching of the 
symbolism of this picture. For Koph is both smitten 
and transformed, and the Apostate is again conformed 
to the likeness of Christ—and this is indeed the only 
triumph the Savior could rejoice in. It is the victory 
for which he died. 

Kamani, ‘.0p, ‘‘the Church Apostate,’”’ the Wor- 
shipper of Ka’amanu, or Saturn, the God of Babylon 
and of Rome, is accordingly smitten and broken up 
into its elements, ‘>">. And now behold! its 
“head,” its initial Koph, which ought to stand for 
the Ker? that comes from Kara’, 8p, and be the seal 
of harmony with Him who is represented by Nun, is 
found to have been perverted into the KerZ that is 
derived from Karah, mp, ‘‘to go contrary,” the 
asterisk that refers to the broken covenant; for, 
resolved into its elements, Kamanti, “the Apostate,”’ 
must be read Ker? (mp) min Nunt, ‘‘ He who walks 
contrary unto my Nun.’ Koph as thus perverted 
is therefore the head of the deceitful beast with the 
horns of a lamb and the voice of the dragon (Rev. 
13: 11); and when its true nature is thus made mani- 
fest, its force as the ‘“‘head”’ of Kaman? is ‘‘ destroyed 
utterly’’ (I. 5p3), and the letter “‘turns about” 
(II. 5p2) and goes back again to its original signif- 
icance as the notation Ker? from Kara’, sp, “‘to 
call.” At last, therefore, Kamani, “‘the Apostate 
Church,” is “‘purged’’ (113%) in accordance with the 


THE SEVEN SEALS 187 


prophecy of the Fifth Reading of the Oracle, and is 
restored to genuine Catholicity; for now its elements, 
Myre must be construed as Ker? (Sip) min Nuni, 


‘‘ He who walks in accordance with my Nun.” 


It is seen, therefore, that Nun? is derived from 
Kaman? in the same way that Reshé is derived from 
Gibbér, except that while the derivation of Reshé 
involves the wounding of the “‘heel’’ (the excision of 
the last letter) of Gibbdr, the derivation of Nun? in- 
volves the grinding of the ‘Head”’ ( Koph, the initial 
letter) of Kaman?. Nuni,°J, is indeed also the last 
syllable of Kamani, but its isolation does not wound 
the ‘‘heel’’ of the ‘‘Rebel”’ as the isolation of Reshé, 
i[w]n, wounds the heel of Gzbbér, the Hero; for it is 
not taken from the verbal radicals that express the 
idea of rebellion but is exactly the pronominal suffix -nz, 
‘3, or in English “‘me,’’ that refers to Jehovah-Messiah 
in his characterization of the “‘ Apostate’? as Kama-ni, 
‘DP, “Him who rebels against me.’ It is in fact 
seen to have been already identical with Nun?, °3. 

A thoroughgoing consistency in the parable of 
Koph would require that the substitution of its 
equivalents in the distinctive radicals of Kaman?, 
‘39p, ‘Him who rises up against me,’’ should produce 
results in harmony with the teaching of the apoc- 
alypse—and it does. When Resh, the Head of the 
Serpent, is substituted for Koph, the Kamani, the 
Rebels, the Apostates, are revealed as indeed Romanz, 
L119; and if Koph is regarded as having been restored 
to conformity with Nun, the word Kaman? is trans 
formed into Na’amanzt, °3208]3, ‘‘They that reveal Me”’ 
—which represents a Church that is indeed the true 


188 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


“body,” the multiple reincarnation, of Ne’um, O83, 
“The Word of God,” whose initial and sign is NUN. 
The new name of the transformed Apostate may 
also be appropriately rendered Ne’emanzt, *32(8]3 
(Niph. part. of jox), “My Faithful One,’ which is 
the term used by Isaiah in the prophecy that in its 
final application refers to the Great Apostasy, and that 
was uttered in the very year of the founding of Rome: 
—‘‘How is the faithful (429N3) city becomea harlot!” 
(Isa. 1: 2I—Cf. Rom. 1: 8). The harlot is now, on 
the other hand, to become once more a “faithful 
city ’’—which is indeed a striking characterization in 
view of the great text of the Reformation, ‘‘The just 
shall live by faith” (AnDS. Cf. Heb. 2: 4;and Rom. 
Doped calor rT 

According to the thought implied in the greatest 
of the old Latin hymns of the Church—the hymn 
inspired by the Great Oracle of Zephaniah— 


‘*Dies irae, dies illa 
Solvet saeclum in favilla, 
Teste David cum Sibylla—” 


it is unthinkable that such an event as this transforma- 
tion of the supreme exemplification of force, oppres- 
sion and exploitation into an incarnation of the 
Prince of Peace, the Lord of Love, should not be 
worthily foreshadowed in local lore as well as in the 
revelation given to the whole world in the Sacred 
Scriptures; and such an adumbration is to be found, 
as would be expected, in the legends that tell of the 
origins of the city that was the home of Virgil and the 
care of the Sibyl, the city that stamped its character 
upon the empire and the hierarchy that have born 
its name. The name Roma is attributed to the 


THE SEVEN SEALS 189 


founding of the city by Romulus, who is appropriately 
represented as a robber chieftain and fratricide sprung 
from Mars and nurtured by a she-wolf. This first 
founder of the city is said to have recruited its popula- 
tion by making it an asylum for all the outlaws of 
the regions round about, and to have provided wives 
for his new subjects by the treacherous rape of the 
daughters of his Sabine neighbors. The story of the 
warlike reign of Romulus ends, however, with his 
disappearance in the midst of a violent tempest; and, 
after an interregnum of a year, he is followed by a 
king of diametrically opposite character, the philos- 
opher Numa, of whom it is told that “‘the City which 
had been founded by means of violence and arms, 
he succeeded in ‘founding anew upon principles of 
justice, law and morality.’’’* It is said accordingly 
that during the whole long reign of Numa the doors 
of the temple of Janus (a by-form of Saturn) remained 
shut in token of the unbroken peace and tranquility 
of the state. Numa is also said to have “taught the 
Romans not to worship the deity by images’? (Lem- 
priere), and it is in harmony with this tradition that, 
as the story is told by Livy (XL. 29), the fourteen 
volumes of his philosophy and laws, which were 
accidentally discovered in the year 181 B.C., just as 
Rome was entering upon her career of world-conquest, 
were publicly burned as having “a tendency to under- 
mine the (then) established system of religion.” 
Sadly different indeed has been the historic city that 
still bears the name of Roma from the legend’s ideal 
picture of the city of Numa. Nevertheless, like 
prophecy in general, that ideal picture has had its 
partial fulfilments, its earnests of better things to 
*Encyc. Brit., 9th Ed., Vol. XVI., p. 628 b. 


190 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHA NIAH 


follow—as witness modern Europe’s heritage of Law 
and ideal of Order—and, in spite of appearances, 
there is far more truth in it than there is in the picture, 
so long overshadowing but finally fading, of the ruth- 
less city of brutal Romulus, for it is a vision of the 
ultimate reality. 


XII 


THE SEVEN COUNTER-SEALS 


THE CHURCH CONFORMED TO THE WorRLD DIs- 
TINGUISHED FROM THE TRUE CHURCH 


IKE the Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah 
itself, its Seven Seals are “‘written within and 
on the back.’’ Upon the Obverse we have 

found, briefly but comprehensively sketched, a 
dramatization of the first Messianic prophecy, in which 
the fish-symbol, Nun-Ichthus-Dagah, represents the 
victorious Hero; and now we are to find upon their 
Reverse a vision that corresponds to a secondary 
use of this symbol in the Early Church—for the 
mystic meaning of Ichthus and the miracle of the 
Loaves and Fishes, which occasioned the Savior’s 
discourse on the Bread of Heaven (John VI), naturally 
gave the fish-symbol a well attested Eucharistic 
significance.* This vision is altogether appropriate 
here, because the Lord’s Supper is the central feature 
of Christian worship, it is the one ceremonial in- 
stituted by the Master himself, and in it we ‘‘do 
show the Lord’s death until he come”’ (I Cor. 11: 26). 
Moreover its divergence both in doctrine and in 
practice with regard to this fundamental institution 
affords an infallible mark wherewith to identify the 
Great Apostasy. 

In harmony with a principle everywhere exemplified 
in Zephaniah’s Apocalypse, the Reverse of the Seven 

* Bennett’s Christian Archeology, pp. 78 ff. 

I9I 


I92 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


Seals is strikingly symmetrical with the Obverse. 
Just as the drama of the Obverse is reinforced by two 
interludes, or subsidiary dramas, one writ little in 
the text of the scriptures and the other writ large 
on the scroll of heaven, so in the Reverse, the Vision 
of the Lord’s Supper is reinforced by the two parables 
of the Manna and the Coriander Seed, which are 
set forth in the anagrams of these dramatic interludes. 
Furthermore, like the drama of the Obverse, the 
Vision of the Lord’s Supper is also divided into two 
parts: the Lesson of the Bread, or the Vision of the 
Wafer, which is carried by the first Counter-Seal, the 
anagram of the first act of the drama; and the Lesson 
of the Wine, or the Vision of the Cup, which is pre- 
sented in the last two Counter-Seals, the reverse 
readings of the seals on which are enacted the two 
scenes of the second act of the drama. 

It will be observed also that here as everywhere 
else in the rhythmic structure of this Oracle, par- 
allelism is associated with antithesis; for, while the 
interludes of the Obverse preface the last act, the 
prophetic act, of the drama with portents of the 
imminence of its fulfilment, the parenthetic parables 
of the Reverse supplement the first of the two visions, 
the scene that sets forth the theory and practice of the 
Mass, and reveal the true doctrine of the Lord’s 
Supper and the finished product of its perversion. 
Moreover, while the great parable of the Heavenly 
Manna is found in the anagrams of the seals that are 
engraved with the miniature drama enacted by the 
letters of the Lost Prophecy, the parable of the tiny 
Coriander Seed is pictured on counter-seals that 
associate it with the portents written on the heavens 
and contrast it with the mighty orbs of immensity. 


THE SEVEN COUNTERSEALS 193 


The word-plays by which the ‘‘Mass”’ in both its 
doctrine and its ceremonial is contrasted with the 
Evangelical conception and manner of celebration 
of the “‘Lord’s Supper’”’ are contained in exactly the 
same words and phrases, neither more nor less, in 
which the symbols of the seals themselves are set 
forth; and as between the Obverse and Reverse of the 
Oracle itself, so between its seals and their counter- 
seals, there is always a logical relationship. In fact, 
the counter-seals may be regarded as making a new 
but related application of the symbolism of the seals, 
and are to be construed in connection with them. It 
is to be observed moreover that the counter-seals are 
anagrams, never of any merely permissible form that 
may be found in the word- and letter-plays of the 
seals, but always of the regular spellings of the words 
and phrases used; and here is to be seen an example 
of the mutual corroboration of its several parts that 
is such an essential characteristic of this hidden 
apocalypse, for thus the rendering of the seals is 
authenticated by the counter-seals. 


I, THE VISION OF THE WAFER. The false doctrine 
underlying the Roman usage with regard to the Lord’s 
Supper and the errors involved in the sacrifice of the 
Mass are clearly indicated in the inscription on the 
first counter-seal, the anagram of the seal that pre- 
sents a picture of the deadly assault of Resh the 
“head ”’ of the Serpent upon the ‘‘heel”’ of the Mighty 
One—a prophetic picture that finds its primary fulfil- 
ment in the crucifixion of the Savior, the great sacri- 
fice of which the Lord’s Supper is our memorial; and 
that finds a further figurative application in the Great 
Apostasy that has wounded the Lord anew jn-hisy=>-—.. 

\ | 


Lay Peehe PS OP ay 
AWA 


194. HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


greater body the Church, the Great Apostasy in 
whose perverted worship the Mass is the chief and 
most characteristic ceremonial. 

As we have seen, the device engraved upon the 
first seal is the phrase that pronounces judgment upon 
the head of the serpent—‘ His head in retribution,” 
Sry]o32 wits. The device upon the corresponding 
counter-seal is therefore Nvinin%, Ld, Mag, bd 
she’er. Remembering that the scene depicted on the 
first seal is the Great Sacrifice of which the Mass 
purports to be a reenactment; and remembering also 
that, so far as the ordinary worshipper is concerned, 
this reenactment is consummated in the sacramental 
wafer of which alone he partakes, we see clearly that, 
if indeed we have here a Vision of the Lord’s Supper— 
and the vision itself will reveal its own identity in- 
dubitably—this pronouncement must characterize 
the bread in the so-called ‘“‘sacrifice’’ of the Mass. 
It is equally clear that since the Obverse is a threat 
of vengeance upon the head of the offender, the 
Reverse ought to make some specification either with 
regard to the offense or the offender. It does both, 
and it is besides the very protasis to which “ His head 
in retribution’’ is the apodosis. It reads: ‘If in- 
deed, O Priest of Babylon, there were in it flesh-with- 
the-blood! ” 

This is a construction exactly parallel to that found 
in Gen. 50: 15. It is a condition contrary to fact— 
and the Mass is of course not in fact a ‘“‘sacrifice.”’ 
It is such in intention, however, and so it does indeed 
“crucify the Lord anew.” 

She’ er, NY, is the anagram of Résh, Ys, the original 
form of Resh and the word for ‘“‘head’’—and also the 
term for the ‘‘venom”’ of the serpent. In contra- 


THE SEVEN COUNTERSEALS 195 


distinction to its synonym Basar, "W1., the primary 
and more specific meaning of She’er is “‘flesh that 
contains the blood’”’ (Cf. Brown-Driver-Briggs, Sub 
Voce). This first counter-seal is therefore a succinct 
but comprehensive statement, not only of the doctrine 
of the Real Presence that underlies the Roman 
Sacrifice of the Mass, but also of the theory on which * 
the sacramental wine is withheld from the laity. 

Mag, 3), is found in Jer. 39: 3 and 13, as the Hebrew 
pronunciation of the Babylonian Machchu, ‘‘Magian 
or priest.’ It is there the distinctive element of the 
title Rab-Mag applied to one of Nebuchadnezzar’s 
high officials—the Babylonian equivalent of the 
Roman Pontifex Maximus. Mag is therefore well 
used here to indicate that the celebrant is a ‘‘wor- 
shipper of Saturn,” a Ka’amani, and identical with 
the Kaman, the “Apostate,” of the Sixth Prophecy 
of the Reverse of the Oracle. 

II. THE PARABLE OF THE MANNA. The parable of 
this great and tremendously significant Old Testa- 
ment miracle is set forth in the readings, obverse and 
reverse, of the two seals that present the miniature 
picture of the coming victory of the Living Word of 
God, the glad message for the watchful eye of the 
true Church, the portent found in the text of the 
Written Word—and this is in accordance with the 
truth that “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but 
by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of 
God.’ The presentation of this parable is two-fold. 

1. The ‘‘Mass”’ is characterized as a perversion in 
the second seal and counter-seal. 

2. The true doctrine of the Eucharist is made 
known in the third seal and counter-seal; and for 
convenience of presentation we will consider this 
second lesson first. 


196 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


When Nu is restored to the text of the Great Name 
at the end of the first section of the Reverse of the 
Oracle, NE’UM, ‘the Word of God,’’ is revealed as 
the mighty name of him who as our great high-priest 
made a full atonement for sin “‘once for all, when he 
offered up himself’? (Heb. 7: 27) as the all sufficient 
sacrifice on Calvary—and this ‘Word,’ a Spiritual 
presence, the Truth both as a knowledge and a power, 
and not the presence of the merely physical body and 
blood of the crucified Savior, is the Bread of Heaven 
symbolized in the Lord’s Supper; for, as the Savior 
himself said in explanation of this very mystery, 
“Tt is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth 
nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you are 
spirit and are life’ (John 6:63). Even so the Second 
Seal and Counter-Seal of the Great Oracle declare; 
for the anagram of Ne’um, THE WORD OF GOD, 
reads Man, }0, which is the regular Hebrew word for 
Manna, the Bread of Heaven, to which the Master 
gave this spiritual significance in the discourse recorded 
in the Sixth Chapter of the Gospel according to 
St. John. 

The original form of Resh being Résh, and this 
word being also the name of a bitter poisonous herb, 
and the term for the venom of the serpent, it is with 
strikingly suggestive consistency that the Masoretic 
substitution of Resh for Nun in the Great Name of 
the Oracle transformed Man, }0, into Mar, 1o—the 
Bread of Heaven, the Manna that was ‘‘as sweet as 
honey,’ became a ‘bitter thing.’ This Mar, this 
“bitter thing,” is the anagram of Rém, o[1}, whichis 
the name of the supreme incarnation of the spirit of 
Anti-Christ; and just as there is found a suggestive 
relationship between Ne’um, “THE WORD OF 


THE SEVEN COUNTERSEALS 197 


GOD,” and its anagram Man, ‘‘the Bread of Heaven,”’ 
so there is found a like relationship between Mar, the 
Manna become bitter, and its Obverse Rém. For 
Rém, D1, may be construed as a form (Inf. Kal.) of the 
verb Ramam, II. 067, which denotes the most horrible 
corruption, and which is only used to describe the _ 
nauseous condition of the Manna that was dis- 
obediently hoarded by the impious in Israel of old 
(Ex. 16: 20). The parallel forcefully suggests that 
characteristically Roman abuse in which the multiple 
repetitions of the Mass are hoarded and actually 
sold—the main source of the revenues of Babylon 
the Great. 

III. THe PARABLE OF THE CORIANDER SEED. The 
parable of this in itself extremely insignificant natural 
object is found in the anagrams of the seals that carry 
the portents of those most tremendous revelations of 
nature, the mighty constellations of the heavens. 

The Parable of the Manna has controverted the 
error of the Apostasy with regard to the spiritual 
import of the Eucharist; and now the Parable of the 
Coriander Seed is to pronounce upon the significance 
of the rite itself—and by implication upon the signif- 
icance of all rites. It isindeed to reveal sacramenta- 
rianism, the exaltation of the mere rite itself, in its 
naked shame as a relic of fetishism. This parable 
like the preceding one is presented in @¥o parts. 

1. The false teaching of the Apostasy is unmasked 
in the Fourth Counter-Seal, which is appropriately 
the anagram of Lo’Dagah, ‘The False Fish.” 

2. The Truth is revealed in the Fifth Counter- 
Seal, which is the anagram of Dagah, the name of the 
fish constellation that represents Nun on the scroll 
of heaven. Here again for convenience of exposition 


198 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


we will consider the true doctrine before we examine 
its perversion. : 

As in the first parable, there is here an allusion, 
and that likewise by a word used nowhere else in the 
Bible, to the Old Testament story of the Manna 
(Ex. 16: 31 and Num. 11: 7). Read in Reverse, 
Dagah becomes Halg|—Gad, 13°54, ‘‘ the Coriander,” 
to which the Children of Israel likened their strange 
bread from heaven—‘it was like Coriander seed.” 
The Coriander was not the Manna, but was sugges- 
tively like it; and just so Dagah is not Nun, but, as 
the Oracle expressly states, is to be “‘read as Nun,”’ 
Kert min Ndani, being taken to represent Nun be- 
cause the one suggests the other through the likeness 
of their names, both meaning ‘“‘fish.’’ So also the 
fish-sign became a symbol of the Holy Communion, 
not because fish was ever an element of the Lord’s 
Supper—for it was not—but because, being itself a 
common food, it suggested the Eucharistic bread 
through the association of the loaves and fishes in the 
miraculous feeding of the multitude that occasioned 
the Savior’s discourse on the Heavenly Manna. The 
lesson is enforced therefore by a series of related 
similitudes that there is this same purely symbolic 
relationship between the Eucharistic elements and 
the body and blood of the crucified Redeemer— 
which are themselves in turn symbols of the New 
Humanity of which we are to partake continuously, 
the humanity of the Son of Man endued with the 
divine life of the Word of God, the New Humanity 
that is born of the Spirit of Truth. 

The simplest Hebrew spelling of Lo’Dagah, “The 
False Fish,” is nx7°x5, and its anagram reads, Halg|— 
Gad ’ El, $8 1x. Now, as we have just seen, Hag— 


THE SEVEN COUNTERSEALS 199 


Gad, ‘“‘the Coriander,’’ which closely resembles and 
suggests the Manna of old, is used here to set forth 
the literal ‘‘bread’’ of the Lord’s Supper as being 
merely a symbol of the Bread of Heaven. Ha[g|— 
Gad ’ El is therefore an exact statement of the error 
involved in that finished product of the false doctrine 
of the Mass, that consummate revelation of its inner ” 
principle, the ‘‘Elevation’’ and adoration of the 
sacramental wafer. It may be translated, ‘* The 
Coriander (the symbol, the bread itself) is God.” 
Truly the Heavenly Manna has here become *‘ Worm- 
wood ’’—and this is the name of the Fallen Star that 
is revealed as a prophetic equivoke in the “mouth” 
of Lo’Dagah, ‘The False Fish,” pictured in the Ob- 
verse of this parable (See Sixth Prophecy of the 
Oracle). 

There is here also a suggestive allusion to a parallel 
idolatry in the Apostasy of Israel according to the 
flesh, the table spread for Gad, the god of Fortune 
(Isa. 65: 11—Rev. Vers., Marg.); for the Mass is 
indeed a magic rite that is supposed to insure the 
eternal good fortune of the soul in whose name it 
is “said.” 

IV. THE VISION OF THE Cup. Of the errors in- 
volved in the abuse of the bread in the Mass no reform 
is possible—the Mass as a whole is to be ‘‘done away 
with”? (Mash, &) when the Head of the Serpent is 
ground under the Heel of the Seed of the Woman— 
and so there was only one scene in the first Eucharistic 
Vision, the true doctrine of the bread being reserved 
for the parables that followed it. The sacramental 
wine, on the other hand, which is the symbol of the 
“blood,” the divine life, of the incarnate Word, the 
Spiritual presence of the Master with its gifts and 
graces and authority, has simply been expropriated 


200 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


by the so-called priesthood ; but now, with the eradica- 
tion of sacerdotalism, it is to be restored to the so- 
called laity; and this restoration, which is a figure and 
sign of the Return of the true Head of the Church, 
is accordingly pictured in the Vision itself. Of the 
Lesson of the Wine there are therefore two parts. 

1. The erroneous practice represented by the empty 
cup of the Mass is pictured in the anagram of the 
erroneous construction of the enigmatic phrase that 
is carried by the Sixth and Seventh Seals. 

2. The true practice and its glad import are set 
forth in the anagram of the true rendering of this 
same phrase. 

By word-play Koph, p, suggests a cup or a bowl 
(Cf. Kaph, Num. 7: 84, etc.). It therefore appropri- 
ately carries the lesson of the wine in this Eucharistic 
apocalypse. This symbol appears in the Oracle as 
the initial of Kamani, “the Apostate’’; and it plays 
its part in the drama of the Seven Seals through the 
resolution of Kamani, ‘x2p, into the cryptic phrase 
Kert min N&ni, in which, as noted in the preceding 
chapter, Nini, °3, stands out in its integrity as not 
derived from the verbal radicals that carry the idea 
of rebellion but from the pronominal suffix -m12, "3 (in 
English ‘‘me’’), which refers to Him whose symbol 
it is and against whom the Rebel has exalted himself— 
and to whose allegiance he is to be restored. The 
oracular quality of this phrase arises, as we have seen, 
from the double construction of Keri, which may be 
derived from either 83P or MP; and the corresponding 
double construction of its anagram brings out clearly 
the most striking difference between the Roman and 
the Evangelical usages in the service of the Lord’s 
Supper, and with dramatic emphasis reveals its 
significance. 


THE SEVEN COUNTERSEALS 201 


When Koph is the equivalent of Resh, and Kamant 
is synonymous with Romani, the phrase Kert min 
Nin? must be rendered “Contrary to my Nun,” 
which is precisely “Anti-Christ.” Kert is now to 
be derived from 7p; but the radicals of this verb are 
really “1p, and so they appear in the word Keri, "9p, 
“Contrary,” which with Zephaniah is the asterisk 
that refers to the sanctions of the broken Covenant. 
The anagram of the phrase becomes therefore pv" DL)", 
Yénam Yurak, ** Their wine shall be emptied out.” 

The verb of this anagram, Rik, is never used of 
pouring out a drink, but always denotes a complete 
emptying out, viz: ““Emptied from one vessel into 
another’’ (Jer. 48: 11); ‘‘ They shall empty his vessels 
and break his jars in pieces’’ (Jer. 48: 12); ‘And it 
came to pass as they emptied their sacks’’ (Gen. 
42: 35); ‘‘For the fool will speak folly, and his heart 
will work iniquity, to practice profaneness, and to 
utter error against Jehovah, to make empty the soul 
of the hungry, and to cause the drink of the thirsty to 
fail’”’ (Isa. 32: 6). It very evidently has a sinister 
connotation—and the very same application in this 
Sixth Counter-Seal of the Great Oracle of Zephaniah 
that it has in the prophecy just quoted from Isaiah. 

In striking reinforcement of this construction and 
interpretation, the Yéxam,* o3[*]', that we construeas 
‘their wine’”’ here, is literally the very Yénam, n3",* 
“their wine,” of the thirteenth verse of the chapter, 
the wine of which Zephaniah himself, prophesying 
concerning the Israel of his own day and speaking 
better than he knew, declared that those typical 
apostates should ‘not drink’’ (Zeph. 1: 13). 

Koph is, however, to be smitten and finally to 


* With the sufhx following it, the second Yod of this word 
becomes merely a vowel letter. 


202 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


receive correction; and when it is no longer the 
equivalent of Resh, when the Kamani, the “ Apos- 
tates’’ that vaunt themselves as Romani, have been 
transformed into Na’aman? and become once more 
a ‘‘faithful’’ Church that truly “reveals’’ Christ, the 
restored and rightful relationship is expressed in the 
restored and rightful construction of Ker? min Nani, 
or ‘‘Read according to my Nun.” The full and 
proper spelling of Ker7 being here 8‘7p, the anagram 
reads: pu"s D3" Yénam ’i-rek, which declares with 
suggestive fullness of meaning, *‘ Their wine is in- 
exhaustible.”” With po"s compare "Pp" (Job 22: 30), 
which Brown-Driver-Briggs (p. 33a) renders ‘the 
non-innocent.”’ 

The lesson of the wine in the Holy Communion 
and the significance of the empty cup in the Mass and 
of the inexhaustible supply in the restored service 
is revealed in the fact that besides being the Yénam 
of the thirteenth verse, the Yénam of the Counter- 
Seals is also the Yen’am of the Rubric. Itis Ne’um 
used as a verb—it is the WORD OF GOD speaking. 
The empty cup symbolizes, therefore, the sad fact 
that from the Apostasy, which vainly essays to 
“create”? for itself a worse than unavailing “real 
presence”’ of the physical body and blood of the Lamb 
of God in the wafer it exalts as a god, has forfeited the 
“Spiritual presence’’ of the Word of God by which 
alone his divine life, his grace and his power can be 
imparted to his Church; but correspondingly glorious 
on the other hand is the significance of the restored 
construction, ‘“‘Their wine is inexhaustible.’ It 
pictures the full, the unreserved and uncircumscribed 
Spiritual Presence of the Glorified Redeemer that is to 
usher in the final Consummation of the Great Sal- 
vation. 


XII 


THE STIGMATA 


THE SEAL OF THE LIVING GOD AND ITs COUNTERFEIT 


HE symmetry that presides over all the com- 
plexity of this unique Oracle and its emphatic 
antitheses and suggestive parallelisms become 

self-evident if the Rubric of the Obverse that author- 
izes the reading in reverse is used as a cantus firmus 
on which to build the harmonious counterpoint of 
the multiple readings. This Rubric falls naturally 
into a stanza of three verses, thus: 

Yin’am Ker[i|6 b-yé6m Jahveh haggadhdl; 

Karfi[’] bh6 maher m’odh kél-yém-Jahveh: 

Min-Natserach, shem Gibbdr. 


It reads, as we have already seen: 


*‘An Oracle will its Reverse utter in the Great Day of 
Jehovah; 

Read in it, vast will be the gain of the Voice of the 
Day of Jehovah: 

‘Nazarene,’ the name of the Mighty One.”’ 


The symbolic letters and their invariable equivalents 
—Reshé,1 (Resh), and Lo’Dagah; and 3 (Nun), Dagah, 
and Nuni—are found grouped at the four corners of 
this stanza in such a fashion that each is diagonally 
opposite an adversary, while the variable p (Koph) is 
strategically situated just around the corner from 
Nuni, against which it is at first in rebellion but to 
which it is finally reassimilated. The significance of 
203 


204 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


the structure of the Oracle that is thus revealed is 
more strikingly manifest if Nun? and its associates 
are written on one side of the cantus firmus and Reshé 
and its associates on the other, the variable Koph 
being associated first with Reshé (Plate I.) and 
finally with Ndén? (Plate II.). 

While Koph is regarded as the initial of Kamani, 
the “Apostate,” and of its equivalent Kert-min- Nini, 
“Contrary to my Nun,” or ‘ Anti-Christ,” it is a 
representative of Resh; and, having no adversary 
diagonally opposite, it must be paired with Niéni— 
to which indeed it is specifically declared to be “‘con- 
trary,” KerZ (Mp). Indicating all these antitheses by 
appropriate lines, we find that the three intersecting 
diagonals that connect the three pairs of invariable 
opposites—Reshd and Nani, 1 (Resh) and Dagah, 
and 3 (Nun) and Lo’Dagah—together with the curve 
(8p3) that shows the divergenceof Koph from Néni, 
stigmatize the historic situation thus assumed with 
the well-known emblem that Constantine chose as 
his standard, %, the emblem that was ostensibly 
Chit Rho, the monogram of Christ, but that was in 
reality Zav-Resh, the symbol of imperialism and the 
MARK OF THE BEAST (Rev. 13: 16, etc.)—See 
Plate I. 

But when at last the head of Anti-Christ has been 
ground under the heel of the Hero and has received 
correction, when Koph is restored to its rightful 
meaning as the traditional notation of KerZz (sp) 
and so is ‘‘to be read according to My Nun,” it takes 
its proper position by the side of N@n7 and there is no 
longer any place for the curve that transforms Jota, 
the initial of Jesus, into Rho, the initial of Rome— 
the same deceitful curve that has caused the Resh 


Te CONST} Eis 
1% 
x5 nk of Isr me TTA a 


My, Va agtaDot 
Nam Nexis bey dy JHVH HagfaDOL 


eqs m/l ee ae) “A ag 


Rash: 
of Ga sn 
Bi Casa TES: 


: HIS ANATHEMA S wm 
ca Gel=Yom JHVH:- erat 


9 é = 
mahet yp TR ROW 
tapi Ker be i ee PPLE CROWN 
whose HOUSE 4 


WHO A 
ert’ : ruled by SATURN, 


NEUM) 

“IN A Ht ee 

STUL = ~Norp s) ed he 
SMALL sin)Naisera h shem 


yolcE 
God, 


Pi  Gibe@ 
AaB tere | che ‘ sham 0 R 


Lees yur | Rech 

DM Umesh sits 
” Bi Ininl 

of Ros 4 | 


Plate I, 


_ The CONSTELLATION 
! U vier? § 
‘ } TspA€ TAT 
SNP re eee 
is ) Doc | HagGaDel 
710 Now Kerie bey JAVA canon, 
Rash -£3° Dagah 
THE CONSTELLATION 


of RAMMAN) the TRUNDERER 
ithe whe “FOLAUMATES” 


his. ANATHEMAS ~ 
: : c . The wearer of Te 
Kart’ bd maher—te rod (Al Yor JHVH:- TRIPPIE CROWN 
ae “ whose HOUSE Laled 


ruled by SATURN 
spraks Vesubol 

(NENTS) 
wa The’ ORD ! 


See AA SMin atsel ach shem ; | 
NOICE Gibb¢) 
GH each sham R fre Resh 
oil Resh. WwW Reo 
ase f Hestes A 
ROME 


Phx. IT, 


THE STIGMATA 205 


of Satan to supplant the Nun of Nazareneand Ne’um, 
“the Word of God,” in the Oracle of the Great Name 
so long—and so the emblem becomes again Jota Chi, 
*, the true monogram of Jesus Christ, the Ichihus 
Sign, the distinctly Christian equivalent of Nun, the 
earliest token of the Church, and the symbol of its 
confession of faith in ‘Jesus Christ the Son of God 
our Savior,’ the “SEAL OF THE LIVING GOD”’ 
(Rev. 7: 2)—See Plate IT. 

The divine author of this oracle has therefore 
stamped his great seal upon it, even in its intimate 
structure like a water-mark, and in such a way as to 
expose the subtle forgery of the usurper, the “‘head”’ 
of the “ Apostasy,’ the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdi- 
tion, who ‘‘sitteth in the sanctuary of God, setting 
himself forth as God”’ (II. Thes. 2: 3, 4)—and in such 
a manner also as to picture and foretoken the end of 
the “falling away,’ the restoration of the whole 
Church to purity of heart and life, and to fitness and 
readiness for the long awaited Presence of her Lord. 

Thus our interpretation of the Fish-symbol as 
representing Nun, the Sign of Christ, in the insignia 
of the Church, and of its perversion through the 
intrusion of Rho, or Resh, as the symbol of imperialism, 
the standard of Cesar, is confirmed by the appearance 
of these emblems themselves in the oracle; for they 
are so disposed as to leave no doubt with regard to 
their application—and the identification of the con- 
summate manifestation of Anti-Christ is driven home 
and clinched. 

In his use of the Seal of the Living God and its 
counterfeit the Mark of the Beast, as in so many other 
respects, Zephaniah assumes a knowledge of the 
Revelation—centuries later than his apocalypse in 


206 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


its enunciation by the Spirit of Prophecy, but mil- 
lenniums earlier in its publication—that was given to 
the Church by the hand of St. John. It will be well, 
therefore, to search out the full message of these 
symbols in the light of their use in the New Testament 
Apocalypse. This use is based on a custom, exempli- 
fied in Ezekiel 9: 4-6, in accordance with which the 
Judge was expected to put his “‘mark,” the equivalent 
of his signature—as with us a “cross,” which was 
represented both in figure and in name by the ancient 
Hebrew letter Zav, our letter “T’’—upon the fore- 
head of the prisoner whom he released, that all might 
know that he had been judged and pronounced “not 
guilty.’ In St. John’s vision, accordingly, “the 
servants of our God”’ are “‘sealed’’ on their foreheads 
with the “‘Seal of the Living God”’ (Rev. 7: 3; 9: 4; 
Cf. 3: 12; 14: 1; 22: 4) to insure their immunity from 
the punishment that is to be visited upon a guilty 
Church—for, like the guilty world, it is to be “given 
up unto a reprobate mind’’ (Rom. 1: 24, 26, 28), 
to be allowed to become a prey to the errors and 
superstitions and the inevitable retributions that 
are to come like demon hosts from ‘‘the four winds 
of the earth’’ (Rev. 7:1). The saints too have been 
sinners, but for a sufficient reason the Judge has pro- 
nounced their pardon. As new creatures in Christ 
Jesus they are to be regarded as “not guilty,” and the 
‘‘seal’’ on their foreheads is the token of the verdict— 
and the full import of that seal is carried by the fish- 
symbol (Nun-Ichihus-®), which is the sign of 
Jesus the Christ and the Chorets, the JUDGE, and 
which was actually the token and countersign of the 
Church during all the years of its pristine purity, a 
token that, beginning with the Fourth Century, 


THE STIGMATA 207 


passed out of use and finally disappeared, as the 
Apostasy appeared and became dominant.* As we 
have seen, it provides us with the only purely Christian 
representation of the Cross, the peculiar ‘“‘cross’’ 
of the Judge, his monogram, his official signature, 
a signature that answers all the specifications enu- 
merated by St. John, through whom the Judge him- 
self says: “‘And I will write upon him the name of 
my God (his own divine patronymic) and the name 
of the City of my God, the New Jerusalem (Cf. Rev. 
21: 2) which cometh down out of heaven from my 
God (the place-name of the glorified Redeemer) and 
my Own new name (the personal name by which he 
is to be hailed at his Second Advent) ’’—Rev. 3: 12. 
In fact the symbolism of Nun-Ichthus-& does more; 
it identifies the Judge in both his divine and his human 
relationships as the great antitype of Joshua the son 
of Nun of Timnath-Serach, as the Word of God, the 
Seed of the Woman and the Son of David. 

1. The fish-letter Nuz is the Sign of Christ and the 
initial of NEUM, ‘The Word of God,’ the divine 
name, the ‘‘new name,’ by which the Coming One 
is heralded by the Voice of the Day of Jehovah: 
Christ (or Chorets) NEUM. Even so St. John says 
of the coming King of Kings and Lord of Lords:— 
“‘And his name is called the Word of God” (Rev. 
Oe 3)? 

2. The fish-word Ichthus gives us the monogram of 
Jesus Christ, the personal name of the Son of God 
made flesh, the name by which he has been known 
during all the Christian Centuries. 

3. The Hebrew and the Greek forms of the symbol 
cooperate to give us the divine patronymic of the 

* See Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VI., p. 83 8. 


208 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


Judge, the antitype of Joshua the Son of Nun (Ix6bs), 
‘Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, our Savior.”’ 

4. Nun is the sign of the Hero promised in the 
Protevangel, the Seed of the Woman, the Son of Man 
who was born of the Virgin. The sacred monogram 
derived from Ichthus is also, as we shall see later 
(Part III., Chap. VII.), a device appropriate to the 
Messiah as the Sou of David—a device whose message 
is peculiarly addressed, as it ought to be, to the Zionist 
Jews of this generation. 

5. The monogram of Jesus Christ is also that of 
Jerushalaim Chadashah, or ‘‘New Jerusalem,” the 
name of the City of God, compounded very properly 
of roots from only one language and that Hebrew, 
but written in the Greek characters of the monogram 
and of the New Testament. 

6. The earthly place-name of the Son of God in- 
carnate is unmistakably suggested by Nun, which 
is the initial of Nazareth and which, restored to the 
text of the Proclamation of the Voice of the Day of 
Jehovah, has revealed the Lost Prophecy that the 
Messiah was to be called a Nazarene. 

7. The symbolism of the Nun-Ichthus sign, the 
token that seals those who are to be accounted “‘not 
guilty ’’ in the Great Day of Jehovah, is not content 
merely to authenticate the seal with the full signature 
of the Judge, even though it thereby shows him to be 
the only rightful and the one truly qualified Judge, 
the God-Man; it is not content merely to assume the 
authority even of such a Judge, but publishes as well 
to all intelligences the justification of his righteous 
judgment. The form of the cross it presents, *, 
the only truly Christian form, the peculiar cross of 
the Judge that carried his official signature, is also 


THE STIGMATA 209 


a pictograph that presents Jesus (I) upon the Cvoss 
(X) as the only possible and all-sufficient ground of 
judicial clemency—the sacrifice of the Lamb of God | 
that taketh away the sin of the world, the gift freely 
offered to ali, of the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ 
Jesus that sets us free from the Law of Sin and Death. 
It is likewise the token that sets forth the individual 
Christian’s only and all-sufficient claim to a share in 
the benefits of that sacrifice, the acceptance of that 
divine life of self-surrender as expressed in his con- 
fession—not by words merely nor by adorning himself 
with a jeweled badge, but by the works of a sacrificial 
life—of faith in “‘Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, 
our Savior.” 

Anti-Christ is, by his very nature as the consummate 
incarnation of the Father of Lies, the arch dissembler; 
and so in the Apocalypse of St. John he is represented 
as assuming not merely the appearance of an angel 
of light, but even the appearance and the authority 
as well (the horns) of the Lamb himself—but as with 
Jacob, the supplanter of old, his disguise is betrayed 
by his voice, the voice of the Dragon (Rev. 13: I1). 
He is represented therefore as mimicking Christ with 
intent to deceive in all such outward forms as would 
seem to be characteristic. Accordingly he too puts 
his recognizance upon his people (Rev. 13: 16, etc.), 
and it is intended to be a complete counterfeit of the 
Seal of the Living God. Nevertheless, just as his 
dragon voice betrays his lamb-like disguise, so of 
necessity his characteristic curve betrays his forgery 
of the signature of the Savior; and St. John indicates 
this fact, and indeed reveals the identity of the 
forger, in the very term he uses to designate his 
“mark,” for he does not speak of it as a Sphragis, 


210 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


aypayis, which is the word he always applies to the 
“Seal”? of the Living God, but invariably as a 
Charagma, xapayua, ‘a mark engraven or imprinted,” 
‘fa coin’’—a word chosen, as Deismann suggests, 
‘‘because it was the technical designation of the 
imperial stamp.”’* Furthermore these two words are 
also peculiarly appropriate here in their remoter 
suggestions; for, while Sphragis could be used of 
‘“‘“wounds’’ such as the Apostle Paul bore in his body 
as the stigmata of the Lord Jesus (See cgpayitw), 
Charagma would suggest the impression of a Charax, 
xapaé—and Charax is a synonym of Stauros, oravpos, 
AEROS >, 

The ‘‘ Mark of the Beast’’ must therefore be sought 
in a figure that suggests a sign of absolution, that is 
some form of the cross, that is an ostensible monogram 
of the sacred name, and that can be found stamped on 
the coins of Rome; and all these requirements are met 
by the emblem that the Oracle of the Great Day of 
Jehovah presents as the counterfeit of the Great Seal 
of God. This emblem, ¥%, or ¥, purports to be 
Chit Rho, the monogram of Christ; but it has been 
emptied of all suggestion of the Ichthus Sign and of 
the Christian’s confession of faith in “ Jesus the Christ, 
the Son of God, our Savior’’; it is a Cross, but it is 
the ‘‘Cross of Constantine’? and the Symbol of 
Imperialism, and it was the characteristic Charagma 
of the coins of the so-called Christian Empire of Rome. 
It is indeed Tav Resh, ¢, the Cross of Rome and the 
Mark of the Beast. As the standard that replaced 
the Imperial Eagles, it identifies Imperial Rome as 
the Beast that was apotheosized, the Beast that was 
frankly an incarnation of the Dragon (Rev. 13: I-10, 

* See Charles’ The Rev. of St. John, Vol. 1., p. 362, note I. 


THE STIGMATA 211 


12, 15); and it identifies Hierarchical Rome as the 
arch-worshipper of that First Beast, as indeed the 
Beast with the dissimulated appearance of a lamb 
and the betraying voice of a dragon, the counterpart 
of the False Prophet and the Great Harlot. In its 
simpler form, the true form of the cross, to which it | 
was finally assimilated under Justinian, who gave the 
sanction of Roman law to the pretensions of the 
Bishop of Rome, it is without question the charac- 
teristic ‘‘Mark”’ of his religion, and is to be seen on 
all his property, his vestments, his utensils, his 
churches—in their very plan; and on all his followers 
it is branded as their token of absolution. 

It is to be noted in this connection that the Churches 
of the Reformation manifested a disinclination to the 
use of the “‘Cross’’ as an emblem in exact proportion 
to their emancipation from the spell of Rome; and it is 
to be observed also that every covert revival of so- 
called Catholicism, or movement toward Rome, is 
marked by something more than a mere artistic and 
forgetful and undiscriminating tolerance of this mis- 
appropriated and perverted symbol. 

The use of the Cross as a thought symbol—as a 
metonomy—has the sanction of multiplied apostolic 
usage in the New Testament (Cf. Gal. 6: 14, etc., etc.); 
and in itself considered there could be no objection to 
its use as a pictorial or even as a material emblem as 
well. Nevertheless it is unquestionable that during 
the first four centuries of our era no such use was made 
of it by the Christian Church. It is universally 
admitted that the ‘‘undisguised cross’’ is not found 
on Christian monuments of the period prior to Con- 
stantine the Great, or even on those of his times, that 
in fact it* does not appear in the insignia of the Church 

* Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV., p. 521 6. Cf. Hastings 


212 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


until the Fifth Century. Itcan not be doubted there- 
fore that the original Cross of Primitive Christianity 
was the merely suggested Cross of the Ichthus Sign 
and the monogram of Jesus Christ; and it is acknowl- 
edged even by the devotees of the overt Cross that 
has supplanted it that this distinctive mark of the 
Medieval Church developed from the Cross of 
Constantine,* which, as we have seen, is the emblem 
of Imperialism and a perversion, an erasure, of the 
true token of the Christian. The development of the 
accepted symbol of the Church we have already 
traced, but it will be well to assemble the principal 
data and set them clearly in order here. 

The successive forms in the evolution and devolu- 
tion of this symbol are as follows: 


I. Tae Turee Forms THAT REPRESENT NUN— 
The Evolution of the ‘‘Seal’”’ 


1. The fish-symbol, which is found in the catacombs 
(those of St. Calixtus) that date from the first decade 
of the Second Century. It is universally acknowl- 
edgedf that of all the symbols employed by the 
primitive Church that of the fish is by far the most 
characteristic and important. It is the providential 
complement, as we have seen, of the prophetic 
symbolism of the Hebrew fish-letter Nun, the Sign 
of the Seed of the Woman. 

2. The Greek fish-word Ichthus, *Ix6is, which, read 


Encyl. of Religion and Ethics, Vol. XII., p. 136, and Vol. IV., 
Pp. 329. 

* Catholic Encyclop., Vol. X., p. 488 3. 

+ Catholic Encyclop., Vol. VI., p. 83; Hastings’ Encyclop. of 
Religion and Ethics, Vol. XII., p. 136; C. W. Bennett, Christian 
Archeology, pp. 77-83, 92. 


THE STIGMATA 213 


as an acrostic, gave the fish-symbol its specific Con- 
fession of Faith in “‘Jesus the Christ the Son of God 
our Savior,’ and was the token and countersign of 
the Christian at the door of the Church. 

3. The Monogram x, Jota- Chi, which is at once the 
abbreviation of Ichthus and a combination of the 
initials of Jesus Christ, *"Incovs Xpiorés, and which 
can also be regarded very readily as a pictograph of 
Jesus (Iota) on the Cross (Chi). This, as we have 
seen, is the form of the symbol that most specifically 
carries the import of the apocalyptic ‘‘Seal of the 
Living God.” 


II. Tue THREE ForMS IN wHIcH NUN 1s ERASED— 
The Devolution of the ‘‘ Mark’”’ 


1. The Chrismon ¥, read Chi-Rho, in which an 
added curve has transformed the letter Jota, the 
initial of JESUS, into Rho, the initial of Rome. This 
perversion was accepted as the monogram of Christ, 
but it utterly obscured the original force of the symbol 
as an abbreviation of the Ichthus Sign and blotted out 
its Confession of Faith—erased it as an equivalent of 
NUN and supplanted it with Resh. It dates per- 
haps from the Third Century, but it gained universal 
vogue and revealed its true significance in the begin- 
ning of the Fourth Century as the ‘Cross of Con- 
stantine’’ and the symbol of Imperialism—and con- 
sequently, as the Catholic Encyclopedia remarks, 
“after the Fourth Century the fish-symbol gradually 
disappeared.’’* 

2. The Monogrammatic Cross, ¢, is a variation of 
the Cross of Constantine that almost completely 
superseded the original form in the Fifth Century. 


* Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VI., p. 83 0b. 


214 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


It reveals the so-called Monogram of Christ as not 
Chi Rho but Tav-Resh, and the Catholic Encyclo- 
peedia calls it ‘a stage in the development of the 
Monogram into the Cross.’’* 

3. The Cross itself, +, +, etc., first appeared as a 
distinct emblem in the Fifth Century;f and was 
adopted by Justinian as the official simplification and 
representative of the Cross of Constantine and the 
Eagles of Rome at the end of the first third of the 
Sixth Century and within a few months of the pro- 
mulgation of his famous decree recognizing the Bishop 
of Rome as the Primate of Christendom. ‘Thus the 
Cross as a material or pictorial emblem and unrelated 
to the historic Ichthus Sign, whether in a covert form 
like the ‘Cross of Constantine”’ or in an overt form 
such as that called the “‘Latin Cross,’ is revealed as 
the “Mark” that counterfeits the “Seal’’ of the 
Living God. Like the Cross as an instrument of 
torture, the Cross as an emblem is peculiarly Roman. 
It is in truth Tav-Resh, the Cross, the Standard, the 
*“Mark’’ (Tav), of RoME (Resh). 

To the historic record as set forth above, the sure 
word of Prophecy adds the portents of the Hebrew 
fish-word Dagah and its counterfeit Lo’Dagah; and in 
conclusion it will be well to note that the Swastika, 
and the Yau Crosses that were doubtless suggested 
in such symbols as the Anchor, were by-forms that 
had no direct influence on the development that 
made the Cross the characteristic emblem of the 
Churches that are the heirs of Constantine; while the 
Vesicapiscis (so called), or Amande mystique, is a 
late invention. 


* Tbid., Vol. X., p. 488 0. 
t Ibid., Vol. IV., p. 523 a. 


THE STIGMATA 215 


It is evident, therefore, that during the first four 
centuries of Christian history, the Apostolic and 
Patristic Churches manifested a disinclination to the 
use of the actual figure of the Cross as an emblem 
that was as decided as was that of the Churches of 
the Reformation;* and the reason could be neither . 
fear nor shame, for those four centuries included the 
times of Constantine and Helena. Moreover it is 
well known that the early Christians were wont to see 
the Sign of the Cross in every possible natural or 
artificial object—in the flight of a bird, in the sails of a 
ship, in the great circles of the heavens, in the out- 
stretched arms, in the sacred monogram with which 
they delighted to seal themselves; and they not only 
saw it everywhere but they openly “gloried’”’ in it to 
such an extent as to bring upon themselves the false 
accusation that they were ‘‘ worshippers of the Cross.”’ 
Nevertheless they refrained for four centuries from 
representing it by any outward emblem more closely 
suggestive than the true sacred monogram—and the 
reason could be nothing less than a well-grounded 
and thoroughly ingrained religious scruple. In truth, 
the danger that lurks in the use of material and pic- 
torial representations of such a symbol had been un- 
mistakably indicated by the Savior’s own comparison 
of the Cross (John 3: 13, 15) with the Brazen Serpent 
that Moses lifted up in the wilderness by divine com- 
mand, but that in later centuries Hezekiah was com- 
mended for breaking in pieces because it had become 
an object of idolatry (2 Kings 18: 4). 

It is easy to see, however, that people who had 
already gone so far in their veneration as to invite the 
accusation of being ‘‘worshippers of the Cross” 

* Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV., p. 522 8. 


216 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


would be hard-pressed indeed by the influences and 
tendencies that came flooding into the Church with 
the sudden change in its fortunes in the first quarter 
of the Fourth Century. The wonder is that, not- 
withstanding the growing assimilation to the Empire, 
and notwithstanding the powerful impulse that must 
have come from the reputed finding of the true cross 
and the distribution of splinters of it as most venerable 
relics throughout Christendom, it was nevertheless a 
full century before the “undisguised cross’’ actually 
made its appearance as an emblem either fabricated 
or pictured—but then it rapidly became the one 
profusely universal mark of the accepted and dominant 
forms of Christianity. And since then the abuse of it 
not only as an object of worship, but also as a charm, 
an amulet, a fetish, has been such as the misuse of 
the Brazen Serpent only faintly foreshadowed. That 
this abuse of it still continues unabated among those 
who are marked by it is witnessed by such services 
as the Festival of the Exaltation of the Cross and by 
such remarks as this of Amalarius quoted with 
approval in a current authoritative publication, * ‘‘The 
virtue of the Holy True Cross is not wanting in those 
crosses which are made in imitation of it.”’ 

Here again is to be seen in the Cross as an emblem 
one of the characteristics of the Mark of the Beast 
as it is pictured in the Book of Revelation. St. John 
always represents the Seal of the Living God as purely 
and simply a certification of innocence written by the 
Judge himself upon the faithful who have washed 
their robes and made them white in the blood of the 


* The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV., p. 536 6. The Cross 
is ‘adored almost equally with God himself’’—so Didron as 
quoted in Hastings’ Encyclop. of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IV., 
p. 328 b. 


THE STIGMATA 217 


Lamb, and in accordance with this symbolism it is 
written only on their foreheads (Rev. 7:3;14:13;22:4). 
It is a mystic equivalent of the blood of the Pascal 
Lamb, and is intended only for the eyes of equally 
mystic agents of divine vengeance, “the Four Winds 
of the Earth”’ (Rev. 7: 1-3). For, of course, we must 
understand that the Ichthus Sign of the early Church 
was not in itself the Seal of the Living God, but merely 
the outward symbolical embodiment by which Divine 
Providence, cooperating with the Spirit of Prophecy, 
has pointed out its application. 

The Mark of the Beast, on the other hand, as now 
generally recognized, is a studied parody of the Jewish 
tephillin (the ‘‘phylacteries’’ of Matt. 23: 5), which 
were “‘practically amulets and were used as a protec- 
tion against evil spirits.’’* These amulets of Jewish 
Apostasy were worn on the forehead and on the left 
hand, and so their parody in the Christian Apostasy 
is represented as worn on the forehead and the right 
hand (See Rev. 20: 4). 

Furthermore, the Mark of the Beast is not simply a 
mystic symbol like the Seal of the Living God, but is 
represented as an emblem intended, like the Jewish 
phylacteries, ‘‘to be seen of men.’ It is not only a 
charm that will ward off spiritual evil, but also a 
token that will insure the favor of the corporeal 
agents of the “Beast.’’ Only those who are marked 
with it are to ‘‘be able to buy and to sell” (Rev. 
13:17). And this prophetic picture has been multi- 
tudinously fulfilled in the Papal interdicts by which 
not only individuals but whole communities and 
peoples have been proscribed, outlawed and placed 
outside the pale, cut off, not merely from all business 


* Charles, The Rev. of St. John, Vol. 1., p. 362. 


218 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


dealings, but from common justice, and even from 
considerations of mercy as well—have indeed been 
deliberately consigned to the pillage, rapine, lust and 
butchery of hordes sent against them under the banner 
of the Cross. For the Reformers of the Sixteenth 
and Seventeenth Centuries, therefore, the Cross of 
Justinian had acquired all the significance of the 
perverted Brazen Serpent of the days of Hezekiah— 
and more. It still reeked suggestively, not only of 
such monumentally miserable exhibitions of hypoc- 
risy, craft, credulity, greed and ferocity as the 
Crusades for the recovery of Palestine, but even more 
suggestively of those other Crusades, such as the one 
that was preached against the South of France and 
that decimated the population and destroyed the 
culture and the very language of the land of the 
Troubadours, with which their own bitter experiences 
were identical in animus, in method and in horror. 
The Cross had indeed for them become the symbol of 
the evil spirit that had taken possession of the Church, 
the spirit that impelled her to worship uniformity, 
worldly power, empire—the spirit of the self-exalting 
city whose name she had taken and whose was the 
Cross as the banner of its hireling legionaries and as 
its characteristic instrument of torture, the spirit 
that made her a crucifier, a persecutor, the Great 
Harlot red with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. 
What then is the lesson we are to draw from the 
Stigmata of Zephaniah’s great Oracle as they are 
interpreted by the Revelation given through St. John 
and by the historic development of the Cross as an 
emblem? Certainly it is not merely a warning to 
look upon any form of the Cross as did the fathers of 
the Reformation and as did the Christians of the first 


THE STIGMATA 219 


four centuries as well. Then indeed would the moun- 
tain have labored and brought fortha mouse. Neither 
should we for a moment think of regarding every use 
of the Cross on banner and shield and signet as a 
mark of disloyalty to the highest conception of the 
truth. Many uses of the Cross today, however 
questionable they may be in the light of both Primi- 
tive and Reformed usage, must nevertheless be 
recognized as utterly devoid of any significance in 
this respect. They are either mere motives in a 
purely decorative art, or they are symbols representing 
entirely legitimate Christian or Chivalric sentiment— 
they are often in intention true Confessions of Faith 
in “Jesus the Christ the Son of God our Savior.” 
We have not the slightest difficulty, however, in 
discriminating these uses of the emblem from the 
veritable Mark of the Beast; and we are fully war- 
ranted in recognizing that Mark in the Cross abused, 
and in regarding it as the prophetically provided 
criterion that reveals the true nature of those institu- 
tions and tendencies that brand themselves with it— 
those institutions and tendencies that pervert the 
Cross of Christ into an idol to be worshipped, into 
a fetish to be worn, or into an ostentatiously flaunted 
token of proud authority instead of the symbol of 
humble self-sacrificing service. Very clear indeed is 
the lesson of the Cross of Constantine itself, which 
marks as the False Prophet, the Great Harlot, the 
Beast with the horns of a lamb and the voice of a 
dragon, any despotic ecclesiasticism, whether of Old 
Rome on the Tiber, or of the New Romes on the 
Bosporus or elsewhere, that worships the imperial 
pride and worldly power supremely incarnate in the 
Roman Empire—and the Cross in the insignia of the 


220 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


Church of today is representative historically, not of 
the Cross of Christ, but of its perversion in this Cross 
of Constantine. 

The true Christian, whatever his ecclesiastical 
affiliations, sings in the spirit of the Apostle Paul— 
Gal. 6: 14: i 


“In the Cross of Christ I glory, 
Towering o’er the wrecks of time; 
All the light of sacred story 
Gathers round its head sublime.” 


But the same spirit impels him to sing also: 


“Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, 
Save in the death of Christ, my God; 
All the vain things that charm me most, 
I sacrifice them to his blood.” 


For him the Cross means the sacrificial love of which 
the glorious example was Jesus crucified, but of which 
he himself must bea sharer as well. Itisacross to be 
borne in all humility, and not a cross to be vauntingly 
and superstitiously worn. 

It is significant that the only representation of the 
Cross that specifically sets forth this lesson of sacri- 
ficial love, the only purely Christian symbol that 
suggests the Cross, the pictograph of Jesus crucified, 
*&, Iota-Chi, which is also the original sacred mono- 
gram and the abbreviation of Ichthus, the New Testa- 
ment equivalent of Nun, the Sign of the Seed of the 
Woman, the emblem that carries all the meanings 
implied in the Seal of the Living God, is no longer to be 
found among the forms of the Cross that are in 
common use. This token of the Early Church is not 
found embroidered on the vestments, or painted on 
the windows, or carved over the portals, of any of 


THE STIGMATA 221 


the Churches of today; and neither is it found any- 
where in the insignia, the blazonry, or the art, of the 
times. The Seal of the Living God is indeed still 
to be discovered in the heart of love and the life of 
service that distinguish every true follower and 
spiritual kinsman of the Lamb of God that taketh 
away the sin of the world; but it is not found written 
as the seal of unreserved approval upon the escutcheon 
of any institution in the world today. The Churches 
of the Reformation have indeed been purged of much 
of the stain of Resh, but they are still, as they them- 
selves would sadly confess, far from being the true 
representatives of Christ that they ought to be; and 
Christendom as a whole, though it is awake to the 
truth as never before, and has already throttled some 
of the heads of the hydra, is still in most of its relation- 
ships and activities only too evidently under the spell 
of the old spirit of exploitation and privilege. 

On the background of these facts, how vividly 
significant become the final portents of the end of 
this age and the beginning of the new era of Righteous- 
ness and Peace of which the prophets of old and the 
Savior himself made mention and to which the New 
Book of Zephaniah specifically points in the last two 
of the Seven Prophecies of the Second Advent message 
of the Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah. Upon the 
stellar picture of the Christendom of this age, as 
upon its representation in the apocalyptic drama we 
have just seen enacted in Zephaniah’s Great Oracle, 
there is to be emblazoned as the token of its con- 
demnation the very symbol that has been its own 
false token of absolution. The heavens above it 
are to flame with the falling stars of the “‘False 
Fishes,’ the astral equivalent of Tav-Resh, the 


222 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


‘‘Mark of the Beast’’; while upon the New World 
that is to follow will be written the “‘Seal of the 
Living God,” the true token of pardon and innocency, 
when the Constellation of the Fishes, the celestial 
counterpart of Nun, “flashes forth like lightning 
upon it.” \ 

Indeed the actual figures of these Strgmata are 
presented to the eye of the mind in the Oracle as it is 
written on the scroll of heaven just as clearly as they 
are in Zephaniah’s version. The ages are marked 
on the chronometer of the Zodiac by the ever-moving 
Index of the Vernal Equinox, and this Index is a 
CROSS—a cross in which Plato saw “‘the self-revela- 
tion of the Soul of the World.’”’ Moreover, when 
rightly conceived, it is a cross of three lines, the 
Equator, the Ecliptic and one or the other of the 
Prime Meridians. For practical everyday observa- 
tions of Right Ascension and Declination men use the 
Prime Meridian of the Equatorial or ‘Terrestrial 
Pole (the Tree of Knowledge), which is ever shifting. 
In fact the locus of the Terrestrial Pole is A CIRCLE 
TO WHICH ITS PRIME MERIDIAN IS A TANGENT. With 
this Prime Meridian, therefore, the Cross of the 
Equinox is the Cross of Constantine, %, Yav-Resh, 
the “Mark’”’ appropriate to the World as it is—and 
six thousand years ago this Prime Meridian gave the 
World as its Pole Star the Alpha of Draco, the Great 
Northern Dragon that pictures the Fallen Archangel 
in Paradise; and the curve that transforms Jota into 
Resh, or Rho, was made visible by the stars of his 
constellation. 

True celestial Latitude and Longitude are deter- 
mined, however, by reference to the Prime Meridian 
of the Ecliptic Pole, which is invariable, A POINT. 


THE STIGMATA 223 


With this Prime Meridian, accordingly, the Cross of 
the Equinox becomes the monogram of Jesus Christ, 
Iota- Chi, *, the Seal of the World as it ought to be, 
and as it is to become—and this promise of the ideal 
was made visible two thousand years ago, for then 
its Prime Meridian, pointing toward the true Celestial 
Pole (the Tree of Life), was indicated by the stars of 
the First Fish of Pisces and its thong, and the Equator 
by the stars of the Second Fish and its thong, while 
the Ecliptic was traced by the Easter Sun emerging 
from the nether realm of the South. At that time the 
Equinoctial Point was near the Alpha of the Fishes 
and was further identified by the Star of the Wise 
Men. Now it has reached their Omega—and all the 
lines of the ‘‘Seal of the Living God’’ are again made 
visible. The Equator and the Ecliptic are set forth 
just as before, but the Prime Meridian becomes a 
specific portent. On the one hand, it directs the 
menace of its portent directly toward Beta Ceit, 
which marks the South Pole of the Galaxy, or the 
Inferno of Infernos, and which is the lucida of the 
first False Fish, the Great Dragon of the Deep; and on 
the other hand, it points far beyond the North Pole of 
the Solar System toward the stellar theophany of 
Coma Berenices, sometimes significantly called *‘St. 
Veronica’s Veil,’’ whose seemingly far distant multi- 
tude of stars on the blue vault suggested of old the 
lapis lazult,* or “‘sapphire,’’ Throne of God at the 
summit of the Universe (Ex. 24: 10 and Ezek. 1: 26 
and 10)—the Heaven of Heavens. This North 
Galactic Pole is, however, not nearly so remote as 

*In unsuspected harmony with the gold-dust besprinkled 


cerulean of this gem, the telescope reveals in Coma Berenices an 
inordinate number of binaries of these two colors. 


224 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


the vast ring of the Galaxy itseli—the Deity enthroned 
upon it is imminent as well as transcendent. Ac- 
cordingly in the Vision of St. John, its shimmering 
stars became the “‘white cloud’”’ on which he saw the 
Son of Man coming down to reap the harvest of Earth 
(Rev. 14: 14, Cf. Matt. 24: 30, etc.; and Acts 1: 9 
and I1). 


XIV 


THE LITTLE BOOK OF THE GREAT NAME 


the seemingly Lost Prophecy of the Oracle 

of the Great Day of Jehovah, has already 
been used to unlock the hidden treasures of Zeph- 
aniah, and has indeed been found to be, as it is called 
in the book itself (Zeph. 3: 9), a Saphah bhertirah, an 
“‘utterance’’ that is bherirah, M173, in both senses of 
the term, “‘purged’’ from the textual corruption that 
so long obscured it, and wonderfully well ‘‘chosen,”’ 
exactly adapted, not to one use merely, nor only to the 
applications that we have already observed—but the 
Little Book itself will have to tell about this peerless 
exemplification of perfect diction in the most difficult 
of contexts, this master-word of an oracular prophecy 
that includes the furtherest vistas of revelation. 

Its origin, as we have seen, was perhaps as far back 
in the remote past when the Spirit of Prophecy in- 
scribed it upon the pages of Zephaniah as its final 
fulfilment was to be far on in the distant future. It 
seems to have been associated with the Sign of the 
Cross in the earliest Semitic version of the Protevangel. 
At any rate, the supplanting of its Num by Resh in 
the text of the prophecy and the subsequent erasure 
of Kesh and restoration of Nun fulfil a tropical mean- 
ing of the Protevangel in such a way as to foretoken 
the final fulfilment of the great promise itself; and 
when Israel first entered Canaan, they found it 
associated with Tav, the overt Sign of the Cross, 

225 


\ | iNatSeRaCh, msi, the key-word preserved in 


226 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


which, as we have seen, is one of the marks of apos- 
tasy, in the names of twocities, My30"n and n-my3[0, 
inhabited by peoples of Semitic speech who had 
doubtless originally walked in the dawning light of 
such a revelation as was known to Melchizedek, but 
who were then in the darkness of the lowest depths of 
religious declension. 

One of these cities, Me] Natserach, or Natserach{eth, 
in Galilee, later became famous as the city where 
Jesus the Christ was brought up; and the other, 
Timnat(h)-serach in Ephraim, was chosen as _ his 
heritage in Israel by Joshua the Son of Nun, the type 
of the Messiah; and its name therefore became the 
first foreshadowing of the fact, later more specifically 
predicted in the Book of Zephaniah, that the Messiah 
was to be ‘‘called a Nazarene’’—and why was he to be 
called a Nazarene? ‘That in him and in his Church, 
his fuller incarnation, might be seen the fulfilment of 
“what is proclaimed,” Mah-niisrach, Mms30, the world of 
mystic and prophetic meanings divinely enshrined in 
the Chosen Utterance that forms the Great Name of 
Christ and the apocalyptic symbol of his Church. 

Even in those ancient times this group of consonants 
M-N-T-S-R-Ch had given evidence of its excep- 
tional adaptability. Its mutations in the names of 
these cities exemplify the method of its interpretation 
in the Oracle, and suggest that the cryptogram in 
which we have found the names and titles of the 
Savior so fully presented—The Nazarene, The Word 
of God, the Christ, the Judge (with ‘‘Jesus’”’ fore- 
shadowed also through the oracular name of Joshua of 
Timnath-Serach)—may be interpreted in terms that 
represent the historic and characteristic phases of the 
Faith that centers in Jesus of Nazareth. It is well 


THE LITTLE BOOK 227 


used therefore in the Apocalypse of Zephaniah as the 
symbol of the Church—well indeed, for the Church 
is the body of Christ, and Christ is not only the theme 
but also the informing Spirit of the Church—and just 
so the Greek monogram of Jesus Christ, *, the 
abbreviation of the fish-word Ichthus in which was 
represented its confession of Faith in him, was used 
as its token by the Church of the first Christian 
centuries. 

There may be combinations of the phonetic elements 
of myo that will give readings altogether irrelevant 
to its significance as the cryptogram of the Great 
Name and the symbol of the Church, and some per- 
haps that would even be incongruous; but this might 
be expected in any enigmatic expression and could be 
no embarrassment to its use, for the purpose of such 
an expression is not to reveal what is altogether un- 
known but to emphasize and interpret something 
already well known, or at least already suggested. 
So in Daniel’s elucidation of the handwriting on the 
wall, Peres, D105, which signified in the first place the 
verb “to divide,” was also vivid with an ordinarily 
very remote meaning because of the only too well 
known fact that the “‘Persians’’ were even then at 
the gates of the city, while its most familiar every-day 
meaning of a “half shekel’”’ was ignored as seemingly 
irrelevant—though, as we now know, it also is an 
integral part of the oracle.* In like manner the 
following renderings of the Great Name and of its 
perversion by the intrusion of Resh in the place of 
Nun are sifted out from whatever other possible 
combinations there may be by their harmony with 
the consensus of history and prophecy, which they 


*See Part II., Chap. VI., 3d Note. 


228 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


emphasize and endorse and even help to interpret by 
their aptness and comprehensive completeness. They 
form indeed a conspectus of the whole history of 
Revealed Religion—a “Little Book” that contains 
both the “bitter”? and the “sweet” of the story of 
the relations between God and man (Cf. Rev. 10:2 ff.). 

The treasures of M-N-T-S-R-Ch, m30, are found 
in seven strata, corresponding to seven periods in the 
history of the City of God on Earth. The first three 
refer to the times antecedent to Zephaniah; the fourth 
was contemporaneous with the prophet; and the last 
three apply to the Advents of the Savior and the 
period between them. It will be noticed that in 
each of the groups of three there are (1) a Covenant, 
(2) an Apostasy that seems to be all devastating, and 
(3) a Restoration, the victorious emergence of dis- 
ciplined Faith. ‘This is indeed the typical order of the 
relations between God and man, and like all types 
and shadows it has many applications. In its 
primary application it is the pattern of human destiny: 
(1) The Creation in the likeness of God, (2) the Fall 
and consequent expulsion from Eden with all it 
entailed, and (3) the promised Redemption through 
the wounded but finally victorious Seed of the Woman. 
It is repeated in the out-working of Redemption: 
(1) The Promise of the Protevangel and the Covenant 
evidenced by Abel’s smoking altar; (2) The Ante- 
diluvian Degeneracy that was purged away as by 
the waters of a flood; and (3) the New World that 
emerged from the Deluge. Again it appears in (1) 
the Covenant of the Rainbow, in which, as indicated 
by Noah’s reinstitution of burnt offerings (Gen. 
8: 20; 9: 17), the Promise of the Protevangel was re- 
newed and amplified; (2) the Apostasy at Babel; 


THE LITTLE BOOK 229 


and (3) the Call of Abraham and the development of 
the Peculiar People in preparation for the coming of 
the World’s Redeemer. And again and again it 
recurs, until its final and antitypical exemplification 
in (1) the Great Salvation through Jesus the First- 
born of many brethren, and the founding of the 
Church; (2) the Great Apostasy represented by 
Babylon the Great, in which the Church was con- 
formed to the World, even to the World at its worst; 
and (3) the ultimate justification of God’s long 
patience in the full Restoration of man to the divine 
likeness and the Restitution of all things—for then 
will be accomplished the mighty purpose hidden even 
in the sufferance of evil—when in the Last Great Day 
of Jehovah the Earth shall have been purged as by 
fire and brought back to its place in the common- 
wealth of Heaven. 

The religious history of the times before Zephaniah 
is represented by the mutations of M-N-T-S-R-Ch, 
mos, in the place-names of Joshuaand Jesus. These 
place-names and the cryptogram itself are Semitic; 
but that the truths they enshrine were originally the 
common property of the whole human race and not 
merely of the Semites is witnessed by the fact that 
not a few of them, as we have seen, are preserved in the 
old Sumerian idiograms, the lingering formulas of a 
purer worship, that were part of the ancient ritual of 
the Kuthean sun-god Nergal, whom we have identified 
with Cheres, the sun-god worshipped at Timnath- 
Cheres and Nazareth. 

I. THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. The question of 
religious origins is answered unequivocally and em- 
phatically in the Word of God. The consistent 
Christian can admit no theory save that of a primitive 


230 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


revelation that was universal in its acceptance and 
that, however rudimentary, was all comprehensive 
in its implications. This was in fact the position 
assumed with practical unanimity until David Hume 
and more especially until the Revolution in the World’s 
thinking brought about by the precipitate and un- 
reserved adoption of the modern Theory of Evolution 
in its inchoate and tentative first forms. Wesee now, 
however, that this Revolution was itself an illustration 
of the later and more mature doctrine of a Creative 
Evolution that moves by Mutation—a doctrine that 
compasses all the truths set forth in the first chapters 
of Genesis and assumed as fundamental in the historic 
teachings of Christianity. The dog baying at the 
moon may indeed be a picture of the prehuman 
animism from which Religion emerged* and to which 
degenerate apostasy always tends to revert; but when 
God breathed into his nostrils the breath of a higher 
life and “‘pythecanthrop rose erect and human,”’ a 
potential ‘‘son of God,’’ it was inevitable that the 
next picture should show him talking with his 
Heavenly Father and receiving a specific revelation, 
a conditional promise of the tree of life and the 
warning, “‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest 
freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that 
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’”’ And 
when he had listened to the Serpent, the vertebrate 
that has reverted to the worm, and had eaten the 
forbidden fruit and incurred the penalty—the devolu- 
tion that entailed forfeiture of the divine potentiality 
by which he was to have inherited immortality—it 
was equally inevitable that his Heavenly Father should 


* Cf. Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 1 vol. ed., p. 711 ff. 


THE LITTLE BOOK 231 


undertake his salvation, should institute the necessary 
discipline, should offer the necessary assistance, and 
should invite the necessary cooperation. To this end 
there were required a further revelation and a new 
covenant—a Religion* that should progressively 
‘“‘re-bind’’ the severed bonds that ought to unite 
Heaven and Earth. And its beginning is to be found 
in the Protevangel, of which there are broken recollec- 
tions in all religions, even the most decadent, and 
of which the complete unfolding is the glorious Gospel 
of the Son of God, the Man of Nazareth. 

All of God’s subsequent covenants with his earthly 
children are based upon an ever fuller and more specific 
enunciation of the promise contained in the Prote- 
vangel, the promise of the coming of a mighty 
Redeemer, the Seed of the Woman, who, at the cost 
of his own wounding, should grind the head of the 
Serpent under his heel and save the world from the 
sin and the consequent devolution of which the serpent 
is the horrible example—and from the grave that is the 
inevitable end of that devolution. This is indeed the 
meaning of the Church spire pointing heavenward 
from the midst of God’s Acre—and this is the hope 
expressed with supreme simplicity in the first chapter 
of the Little Book, which reads: Minne-Tseriach, 
msi, “From the Grave.’”? What could be more 
appropriate, therefore, than that the Savior who was 
to rise from the grave as the first fruits of them that 

* Let it be observed that not ‘‘Creation’’ but the institution 
of this Religion of Salvation is the terminus a quo of Bible Chro- 
nology, and let it be further observed that in this Religion of 
Salvation the spiritual history of humanity had already passed 
through the stages of Revelation and Declension to the third 


stage, that of Restoration; and it will be seen that the date indi- 
cated in Scripture (c. 4000 B.C.) is altogether reasonable. 


232 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


sleep should be identified by this same expression, 
hidden and long unsuspected, but in due time revealed 
through the fact that, in accordance with the Lost 
Prophecy, he was “called a Nazarene,” my39? 

In its references to that first germinal revelation, 
the Little Book of “the Great Name, moy39, exhibits 
the same characteristics that are found in its chapter 
on the final and complete revelation in Christ- Ne’um. 
Reversed and with Tsade resolved into T S, it becomes 
Cheres TAV-Ne’'um, alxirf psn, “The Sun is the 
symbol of the Word of God.’ This is in accordance 
with the tradition that shines out unmistakably in 
all regions and among all races, even in the darkest 
perversion of the original revelation; and, as we have 
seen, like fossils embedded in the prehistoric rocks, 
the formule of the primitive faith that set forth the 
Protevangel in terms of this divinely authorized 
symbolism (Cf. Ps. 84: 11; and Mal. 3: 10, Heb., or 
4: 1, Eng.) and that have continued to be living ex- 
pressions of the truth concerning “‘Jesus the Christ, 
the Son of God, our Savior’’ in the perennially re- 
plenished fountains of the Religion of Israel, are found 
petrified in the pre-Semitic idiograms that represent 
the Babylonian sun-god Nergal and his alter-ego 
Ninib. And how could the hope that is expressed by 
Minne-Tsertach, nosy, ‘‘From the grave,’’ be more 
faithfully and gloriously pictured than it is in the 
daily and yearly rounds of the sun, which nightly goes 
down into the nether regions, the realm of the grave 
in the thought of the ancients, leaving the world in 
darkness, but only to rise victorious and resplendent 
in a new and better day; and which with the Winter 
Solstice begins the patient journey that gives glad 
promise of Easter! 


THE LITTLE BOOK 233 


Furthermore, as was to be expected, we find that 
when the race from which Abraham was called came 
into the land of Shinar and fell heir to these Sumerian 
presentations of the universal allegories of Night and 
Day and Winter and Summer, they did not fail to 
associate with them, by the familiar and favorite 
device of word-play, the Great Name, mys0, that the 
Spirit of Prophecy was preparing for the final un- 
folding of the full meaning of the Protevangel. The 
sign group SHESH. GAL. (B.L.* 6452), which, as 
we have seen (Part I., Chap. III., Sec. II.), is one of the 
characterizations of Nergal and which carries the 
two Messianic titles of “‘Great High Priest,’”’ Urigallu, 
and “Elder Brother,” Achu Rabu, may be rendered 
also, by double construction of SHESH (B.L. 6443 
and 6437), ‘“‘ The Great Brother-Protector,” or, in 
the Semitic Babylonian, The Great Munatsir-’Ach. 

II. Apostasy—of which the ancient synonyms 
were the Tower of Babel and Nimrod, the mighty 
hunter against Jehovah who sought to reunite the 
world in the iron bonds of despotic empire in spite of 
the Dispersion and the Confusion of Tongues with 
which it had been visited—is well represented by 
the name common to the cities of Jesus and Joshua 
and by the disruptions, inversions and perversions 
that have sometimes almost obliterated it from the 
records. T1]mnath-Cheres (pinniv[n), “Place de- 
voted to the worship of the Sun,” the original 
name of these cities, pictures the characteristic 
features of the religious declension that had filled 
up the measure of the iniquity of the original in- 
habitants of Canaan, the sun-worship—an example 
of the general nature-worship—which, beginning no 


*B.L. = Briinnow’s Classified List of Cuneiform Idiographs. 


234 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


doubt with the perversion of the helpful and divinely 
authorized contemplation of the orb of day, the con- 
queror of night, as a beautiful and suggestive symbol 
of the World’s Redeemer, into a more than question- 
able veneration of the ikon itself, ended in the crass 
idolatry and the utterly immoral orgies of heathenism 
and in such horrid rites as those that lit the fiendish 
fires on the altars of Moloch and made the Valley of 
Hinnom infamous. An even more specific reference 
to the nature of this apostasy is to be seen in Timdnath- 
Cheres, ** Likeness of the Sun,” the play on the name 
with which Jewish tradition tells of the sun-image 
carved on the ancient tomb in which Joshua was 
buried; for Timénath is the very term used in the 
Second Commandment, “‘Thou shalt not make unto 
thee any graven image or any likeness of anything 
that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth 
beneath or that is in the water under the earth: Thou 
shalt not bow down thyself unto them nor serve 
them’”’ (Ex. 20: 4-6, etc.—Cf. Deut. 4: 19). It is 
further characterized in the twists Deborah and 
Barak gave the name of Nazareth when that city was 
the stronghold and center of the political despotism 
and religious corruption of Jabin and Sisera: | 7im- 
nath| Charishéth Hag-Gotm, * Place of the Sorceries 
of the Gentiles”; and [Timnath] Chariséth Hag- 
Goim, ‘‘ Place of the Burnings of the Gentiles.” 

As we have seen, Cheres, the sun-god worshipped at 
Timnath-Cheres and at Nazareth, is to be identified 
with the Babylonian Nergal, the Mighty Conqueror 
and Ruler of ‘The Great City,’ the Realm of the 
Dead, the Grave. It was most appropriate, therefore, 
and significant, that the place devoted to his worship 
should become a ‘‘ Place devoted to the Grave,’ a 


THE LITTLE BOOK 235 


“Place of Sepulture,”? Timnath-Tseriach, myioln]— 
and this is the form in which the name has persisted 
as applied to Nazareth, |[M]Naiserachleth|. But that 
in the midst of this apostacy God was preserving a 
Righteous Remnant in which was the promise of final 
Restoration, Israel’s Dooms-day Book sets ferth in 
(Mnath) -Sarid and -Seddouk, its intimations of 
Mnath-Serach. 

III. RestoRATION—exemplified in the typical call 
and development of the Chosen People—is symbolized 
by the restoration of the Chosen Utterance to its un- 
broken sequence and its transformation into Tim- 
nath-Serach, mo-nioinj, the happy equivoke Joshua 
substituted for Zimnath- Cheres and Timnath-Tseriach 
when he chose that city as his portion in Israel. The 
destruction through the Conquest of such evil in- 
stitutions as the sun-worship at Timnath-Cheres, and 
the entrance of Israel into the possession of the land 
purged of its apostasy, are typical—not in their 
methods and human imperfections, of course, but in 
their providential results—of the final overthrow of 
all evil in the Great Day of Jehovah and of the 
entrance of Spiritual Israel under the Joshua of the 
New Covenant into ‘the rest that remaineth for the 
people of God,” into the possession of the promised 
inheritance that is no more to be corrupted or defiled 
and that fadeth not away, the Heavenly Canaan into 
which the people of God will pass over dry-shod from 
the earthly Gilead of Immanuel’s Land. 

Most appropriately, therefore, the old name of the 
city chosen by the leader of Israel, Timmnath- Cheres, 
“Sanctuary of the Sun,” which reflected the apostasy 
of the original inhabitants of the land and which, in 
its earlier paronomasia, Zimnath-Tseriach, “ Place 


236 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


of Sepulture,” pictured the wages of sin, was trans- 
formed into Timnath Serach, mo-nid (nj, “A Boundless 
Portion,’’ foreshadowing the eternal inheritance of the 
true worshippers of the ‘‘Sun of Righteousness,’’ or 
Paradise Restored. 

IV. To ZEPHANIAH’s Own TIME applies the literal 
meaning of the cryptogram as derived from T’sarach I., 
“to cry aloud,” or Manntisrach, nv¥3, which is the 
assimilated form of Mah- Niisrach, mosrnd, ‘ What 
is proclaimed?’’? Only in his prophecy as it was 
addressed to his contemporaries did the prophet 
make use of this question; and the answer to it is 
found in the final clause of the verse, ‘‘There is the 
Mighty One.”’ It was the warning of the Voice of 
the Day of Jehovah on the eve of the Babylonian 
Captivity, the “loud proclamation”? with which it 
announced the beginning of the Times of the Gentiles. 

From the point of view of the prophet, the remaining 
chapters of the Little Book are predictions of the 
future; but they have now in large part passed into 
history, and all of them correspond with either records 
or prophecies found in other parts of the Word of 
God. There can, therefore, be no uncertainty in 
their elucidation. 

V. Tue Frrst ADVENT is set forth in seven readings 
that, brief as they are, suggest nevertheless a complete 
epitome of the Gospel. The first contains its funda- 
mental doctrines, the next four picture the cardinal 
features of the Life of Jesus, while the last two present 
the two-fold work of the risen and glorified Redeemer, 
his indirect work through the Holy Spirit, his ‘‘ Advo- 
cate’’ on Earth, and his direct work as our ‘‘ Advo- 
cate’’ in Heaven (Cf. John 14: 16, etc., and I. John 
2: 1ff.). It will be observed also that the three 


THE LITTLE BOOK 237 


offices of the Christ, as Prophet, Priest and King, are 
clearly suggested in the biographical readings. 

It will be further observed that the temporal 
sequence of the four biographical readings is also that 
of the four constructions of the text on which they are 
severally based: (1) a play on the construction in- 
tended by the prophet himself in his appeal to his 
contemporaries, (2) the reading of St. Matthew, 
(3) the corrupt rendering of the Masorites, and (4) 
the restored text as it is construed in the New Book 
of Zephaniah. ; 

1. Manna* Tsiir-’ Ach, ALIX J>DI8 jo. In the three 
words of this reading is concentrated the essence of the 
whole Gospel. They present just those truths con- 
cerning Him who was called the Nazarene that reveal 
in Him the World’s Redeemer: (1) Manna, “ The 
Bread of Heaven” (Cf. John 6: 31, etc.); (2) Tsar, 
“The ROCK,” a divine name and the one that above 
all others is here most suggestive (Cf. Deut. 32:4, 15, 
18; Isa. 44: 8; Ps. 78: 35, etc.), the smitten Rock 
whence flows the water of life (Num. 20: 113 and I. 
Cor. 10: 4), and the Rock that is nevertheless unmoved 
and unmovable, on which the Church is founded 
(Matthew 16: 18); and (3) ’Ach, Our “ Brother,’’ 
the Son of Man (John 5: 27, etc.), the First-born 
among many brethren (Rom. 8: 29). He is the 
Mediator, the living bond of union, between the 
human and the divine, the God-Man, ‘‘the ROCK 


* That Manna and not Manis thetrue and original pronuncia- 
tion of this word is the testimony of the Septuagint, the New 
Testament, the Apocrypha, Josephus and the cognate languages— 
of all the sources except the version of the Masorites—and is the 
suggestion also of Ex. 16: 15. The form Man, however, being 
found in the present text, is of course a perfectly legitimate basis 
for word-play also. 


238 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


and our Brother ’’; and therefore we live through him, 
he is our ‘‘ Manna,’ the Bread of Heaven that sustains 
eternal life—the bread that represents the price that 
was paid, the life laid down on Calvary (Cf. Luke 
BO ANTOMETCL): 

The doctrinal significance, thus figuratively set 
forth, of this Hebrew cryptogram of the name of the 
Messiah and Little Book of the History of the Church 
of all ages is therefore the same as that of the Greek 
monogram of Christ and token of the early Christian 
Church, the Confession of Faith, literally expressed 
in the fish-word Ichihus, ‘Jesus the Christ, the Son 
of God, our Savior’’; and it suggests also Peter’s 
rock-confession, ‘‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
Living God ’’—Matt. 16: 16. 

2 Mah Netser’Achis a play on the uncontracted 
form of the question, “‘What is proclaimed?’’—Mah 
Nitsrach—which was the original construction of the 
Chosen Utterance in Zephaniah’s prophecies. It is 
accordingly the first in order of the four readings 
that tell the story of Jesus. It may be rendered, 
“Alas, What a Netser!’”’, or ‘‘ What a Netser is 
our Brother!’ Now WNetser is Isaiah’s term for the 
Messianic BRANCH (Isa. 11: 1). We have here 
therefore a direct announcement of the coming of the 
Messiah, and it is expressed in a manner that corre- 
sponds with the outward circumstances of the great 
event—so unacceptably contrary to human expecta- 
tions. Moreover, a Netser is a “‘branch’’ that is 
still green and tender, still in the sap, a tiny shoot. 
This exclamation accordingly pictures the marvel of 
the inscrutable fact, lamentably hazardous from the 
human point of view, that the accomplishment of 
God’s most cherished purposes and the destiny of 


THE LITTLE BOOK 239 


humanity hung upon the fate of a seemingly helpless 
infant whom a monster of wickedness sought to 
destroy. ‘* Whata tender little shootis our Brother!’ 
is the Little Book’s characterization of the Babe of 
Bethlehem. 

3, Min- Natsarach, M830, is the next in order, for 
it is the play on the assimilated form of the original 
question in which St. Matthew discovered the Second 
Proclamation of the Voice, the prophecy that ‘ Naz- 
arene’’ was to be the name of the Mighty One—and 
because of the years spent in the obscurity of his 
Galilean “hiding-place,” it was as the Prophet “of 
Nazareth”’ that the Savior was known during the 
time of his public ministry; and it was as “‘ The 
Nazarene ”’ that he was despised and rejected of men. 

4 Mar Tsoreach, My, is the form of the Lost 
Prophecy as it is perverted in the corrupt text of the - 
Masorites. With Nun supplanted by Resh, it echoes 
the “Bitter Cry’’ of the crucified Savior. The whole 
proclamation of the Voice of the Day of Jehovah as 
it is written in the present text, Mar Tsoreach sham 
Gibbér, means literally, ‘‘ There is the Mighty One 
crying loudly and bitterly °’’—even so it is written: 
‘About the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 
saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is, My God, 
my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And some of 
them that stood there, when they heard it, said, 
This man calleth for Elijah. And straightway one 
of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with 
vinegar, and put it on a reed and gave him to drink. 
And the rest said, Let be; Let us see whether Elijah 
cometh to save him. And Jesus cried again with a 
loud voice, and yielded up his spirit ’’—Matt. 27: 
46-50. Cf. Mark 15: 34-37; Luke 23: 46. This, 


240 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


rather than the crucifixion itself, was the crisis of the 
sacrifice offered by our Great High Priest. It was 
the dregs of the cup of which he tasted for every man. 
It was “ His supreme redeeming hour.’’* 

With infallible precision, therefore, the Spirit of 
Prophecy and the hand of Providence have cooperated 
to make even the mistakes of men and the perversions 
of the Adversary work together to reveal the truth. 
The Father of Lies has indeed with ready cunning 
transformed this most specific of the predictions of the 
coming of Him who was to be his conqueror into a 
taunting reference to his own seeming victory on 
Calvary—but only to contribute an essential element 
to the unfolding of the sure word of prophecy. 

5 Minne-Tseriach, n0J>8-0130,¢ which is the fuller 
equivalent off my", “‘ From the Grave,” has already 


been found in the Little Book, in its very first chapter. 
There it was a prophecy that set forth the great hope 
enshrined in the promise of the Protevangel. Here 
it is the record of a glorious fulfilment of that prophecy 
in the resurrection of him who was the first fruits of 
them that sleep—an earnest of the final victory of 
the whole of redeemed humanity over the last of foes, 
and a revelation of the irresistible power of Christ 
the King. 

This reading of M¥39 would have had no meaning 
in its context for Zephaniah’s contemporaries; and 
it was impossible for St. Matthew, to whom II. my 
was unknown. It is therefore peculiarly associated 
with the restored text of the Proclamation. which is 
its fourth construction. 


*See James Hastings, The Speaker’s Bible, No. I., Part I., 
Dage. 

t See Ges., § 90, 3 a. 

t So written in I. Sam. 13: 6. 


THE LITTLE BOOK 241 


6 Minnah tsé6 Riach, nOJ7 Dy *nav, * The Spirit 
will administer his ordinance, or what he ordains”’; 
Tsé (8 + the pronoun }) is from m1, and this verb 
and the Piel of 439 both mean “‘to appoint, to com- 
mand, to ordain.”’ The declaration here is, therefore, 
that The Holy Spirit as his messenger will ordain 
what Christ ordains. A more divergent paronomasia 
by the doubling of Resh gives us Minnah Tsir Raach, 
nos Cals, “He will appoint the Spirit his Mes- 
senger.”?. Compare John 14: 16, 17, 26; 15: 26; 
TOs 7b, ats. 

7 Menath-Serach, mo-ni», ‘A Boundless Heri- 
tage.”? This is the Chosen Utterance’s equivalent of 
Tumnath-Serach, Joshua’s prophetic pronunciation of 
the name of the city he chose as his portion in Israel; 
and we have already considered it in the third chapter 
of the Little Book. It presents here the earnest of 
its own fulfilment in those activities of the ascended 
Lord of which he gave us a hint in his last discourse, 
when he said, “Let not your heart be troubled: Ye 
believe in God, believe also in me. In my father’s 
house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would 
have told you. I go to prepare a place for you’’—a 
place of which the earthly Canaan whither the 
Joshua of the old covenant led the ancient people of 
God was a shadow, and of which the New Jerusalem 
coming down from God out of Heaven will be the 
realization. There is here implied also the promise 
of his return, as he said, ‘‘And if I go and prepare a 
place for you, I will come again, and will receive you 
to myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” 
John 14: 3 ff. 

* The letter 7 is here merely the carrier of the vowel and has 


no consonantal force—Ges., § 23, 4. The final radical is really 
Yod, 


242 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


VI. THe Great Apostasy. The corruption of the 
Great Name in the text of the Masorites—the name 
of the Master that is also the apocalyptic symbol of 
the Church—is indeed a prophetic way-mark down 
the ages, and both sides of the shield have now been 
only too faithfully fulfilled. On the Obverse, as we 
have seen, its vision of the Mighty One “crying 
loudly and bitterly’’ points to the crucification on 
Calvary and the seeming victory of the Adversary 
over the Savior himself; and on the Reverse, as we 
are now to see, its anagrams picture the later wounds in 
his greater body, the Church, inflicted by the con- 
summate incarnation of the Great Dragon. The 
pictures presented by these anagrams are the same 
as those in which the revelator of Patmos painted 
Babylon the Great—but Zephaniah’s Apocalypse has 
no need of the oblique designation Babylon the Great, 
and uses instead the direct and unmistakable name 
ROME. These pictures are seven in number, but 
they fall naturally into three categories. (1) Four of 
them identify the Apostasy with Rome, and are 
therefore comparable to the beast-imagery of the 
Book of Revelation, for the apocalyptic beasts are 
always symbols of empire. (2) Two of them charac- 
terize it by the term Chor or Chur (from III. n), 
which is used in the Scriptures of a “‘den”’ of lions 
(Na. 2:13), of the “hole’’ of an asp (Isa. 11: 8), and of 
the “‘caverns’”’ or “‘pits’’ that harbor outcasts (Job 
30: 6). They may be expected, therefore, to corre- 
spond to St. John’s vision of the Great Harlot—and 
they do exactly. (3) The remaining construction is 
in the form of a prophetic pronouncement in the 
second person, and its prediction is precisely such as 
would be most congenial to the lips of the False 
Prophet of Apostasy. 


THE LITTLE BOOK 243 


1. Chor Sat Rém, D1 oO’ Nn, is a categorical state- 
ment of both the fact and the nature of the Apostasy. 
It reads, ‘‘ The Noble One, or the Free-born (The 
Church—Gal. 4: 26), becomes by apostasy ROME.” 
The Church is assimilated to the despotic Empire of 
the Czsars, which is represented by the First Beast 
of the Book of Revelation. Indeed this reading may 
be regarded as applying in the first place to the City 
of Rome itself. For, as we have seen, the reformation 
under Numa soon gave way to the apostasy under the 
oriental Etruscan dynasty of the Tarquins; and then, 
having been quickened with a new life once more and 
become a republic, it apostasized again—and the 
last state of that city was worse than the first, for its 
name has become a synonym for the tinseled slavery 
of imperialism. Gentile Rome is therefore typical 
of the Gentile Church that has inherited its name. 
The word Chor is here from nN, which in the Cognate 
languages carries the idea of being or becoming free. 
In Hebrew it has acquired also the idea of being well 
born or noble. It is therefore a faithful characteriza- 
tion of the Christian, whom the Lord has set free 
from his former slavery to sin and ennobled by 
membership in the Household of Heaven; and the 
violent contrast of Rome, the absolute and exploiting 
despotism, the ruthless destroyer of Jerusalem and 
the fearful persecutor of Spiritual Israel, plumbs the 
dark depths of the Apostasy. The construction here 
of the verb Saf (piv = Targ. OD, “‘to apostasize’’) 
with the accusative is exactly paralleled in the ex- 
pression of the Psalmist, mtn °pt (Ps. 40: 5), which 
Brown-Driver-Briggs (p. 962) renders, ‘those falling 
away to falsehood.’’ 

2. Christ-Rém, oynorn, * Christ-Rome,’’ is an un- 


244 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


mistakable equivalent of St. John’s Second Beast, the 
Beast with the deceptive appearance of a lamb and 
the betraying voice of a dragon (Rev. 13: 11 ff.)— 
it is an unmistakable description of the Apostate 
Church, which claims to be the “body of Christ,” 
but which is in reality the reincarnation of Imperial 
Rome. 

The corruption of the Hebrew cryptogram by the 
intrusion of Resh presents the same picture, therefore, 
as does the corresponding corruption of the Greek 
monogram of the Redeemer’s name and title. Christ- 
Ne’um sets forth the Second Advent name of the 
Mighty One, Ne’um, “‘The Word of God,” together 
with the title that expresses his relation to the King- 
dom of God among men, “The Christ,’’ the Lord’s 
Anointed, its rightful King; and its perversion, 
Christ-Rém, reveals the name of the incarnation of 
the Great Adversary that has usurped the place of 
the Master in his Church and pretends to exercise 
the prerogatives of the King, even to his infallibility, 
in a travesty of his Millennial Kingdom. Just so & 
(Tota- Chr), the true monogram of the Savior, stands 
for Jesus Christ, a combination of the First Advent 
name of the King and his royal title; while the spurious 
monogram ¥ (Chi-Rho), though it suggests Christos, 
leaves out the personal name of the rightful King and 
is indeed the monogram of Christ-Rém—a reading 
confirmed by the fact that this ostensible monogram 
of Christ is in reality the standard of Rome, the 
emblem of Imperialism. 

3. The constructions O35 nwn and O17 nn are the 
same twists on the name of the Nazarene that was 
given to the name of Nazareth when that city was 
the seat of the recrudescent and aggressive heathenism 


THE LITTLE BOOK 245 


against which Deborah and Barak fought victoriously 
in Israel’s first Battle of Armageddon. They give us 
four readings, very different in meaning, but as closely 
related in their apocalyptic associations as they are 
in their sound. They complete the picture of the 
Beast represented by Chrisi-Rém, just as it is drawn 
by the New Testament revelator. 

3a. Cherishéth Rém sets forth ‘‘ The Sorceries of 
Rome ”’; and 

36. Charisé6th Rém predicts ‘‘The Burnings of 
Rome ’’; and just so St. John says, ‘And he doeth 
great signs that he should even make fire to come down 
out of Heaven upon the earth in the sight of men” 
(Rev. 13: 13). The allusion is evidently to Elijah’s 
great sign on Mt. Carmel which the priests and 
prophets of Baal vainly tried to duplicate (I. Kings 
18: 17 ff.); and the prophetic application is to the 
“sions and lying wonders’”’ (II. Thes. 9: 2) of the 
Man of Sin, especially to the assumption of divine 
authority in the “fulminations’’ of papal excommuni- 
cations and anathemas—and to the exercise of that 
pretended authority and power exemplified in the 
Autos da fe and their like that have been his veritable 
Chariséth, ‘burnt offerings to Cheres-Molech-Saturn.” 

3c. Charishath Rém (from I. win, Pass. Part. Kal., 
Cf. Jer. 17: 1) corresponds to the culmination of the 
sorceries of Rome as painted in the verse following 
the one quoted above, ‘‘And he deceived them that 
dwell on the earth by reason of the signs which it was 
given him to do in the sight of the beast; saying to 
them that dwell on the earth, that they should make 
an image to the beast who hath the stroke of the 
sword and lived’”’ (Rev. 13: 14). For Charishath 
Rém means literally ‘‘ The Graven Image of Rome ” 


246 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


—See nviin, Jer. 17: 1; and Cf. I. nwan, Ex. 31:5; 
Boos: 

According to this reading, the Image of the Beast 
is unquestionably to be identified with the simulacrum 
of Rome fashioned by the Papacy and given the name 
of ‘‘The Holy Roman Empire,” an institution that 
in its later decline was derided by Voltaire as neither 
holy nor Roman, nor yet an Empire, but that during 
the whole of the Middle Ages was certainly no mean 
factor in the life and development of Christendom. 
And there can be no question that the age-long worship 
of this image of Empire, lingering like a superstition 
in the ideals and aspirations even of the Protestant 
peoples of once Imperial Germany, was one of the 
essential factors in the evocation of the Beast itself 
from the Bottomless Pit where it had slumbered so 
long that men thought it had been cast into the 
oblivion of the lake of fire and utter destruction.* 

3d. Charishéth Rém (from I. wan, No. 3, “to 
devise, to scheme’’—usually in a bad sense) calls 
attention to *‘ The Evil Schemes of Rome” that 
are described in the last verses of the Thirteenth 
Chapter of the Book of Revelation: ‘‘And it was 
given unto him to give breath to it, even to the image 
of the beast that the image of the beast should botht 

*See James Brice, Holy Roman Empire, Chap. XXII., esp. 
Pp. 430-431. 

+ The various Greek texts overwhelmingly agree in represent- 
ing that the Image is to be empowered both to talk and to cause 
that they who refuse to worship shall be put to death. This is 
im accordance with the fact that those who offended the Ecclesias- 
tical Empire were handed over to the civil arm of Christendom, 
the Holy Roman Empire and its constituents, to be executed. 
Many manuscripts state also that it is they who will not worship 
the Beast and its image who are to be slain—See Charles’ Revela- 
tion of St. John, Vol. I1., pp. 319 and 420, note 5. Charles 





4 
; 
! 
‘ 
a 


THE LITTLE BOOK 247 


speak and cause that as many as should not worship 
the beast and its image should be killed, and he 
causeth all... that there be given them a mark 
on their right hand or upon their forehead; and that 
none should be able to buy or sell save he that hath 
the mark, even the mark of the beast, or the number 
of his name.” 

4. Chartis Rém, ov yon, “ Gold-Rome,” points to 
the inevitable conclusion of the worship of God and 
Mammon (Matt. 6: 24), and to the inevitable judg- 
ment upon the worshippers of the Golden Calf—Cf. 
Charttts Rém in the Second Advent readings following. 
Love of money is indeed a main “‘root”’ of Apostasy. 

5. Chor Tsarim, nrsan, A Den of Persecutors ” 
(Cf. 1%, Job 16: 9, etc.), shows us the woman whom 
John ‘‘saw drunken with the blood of the saints and 
with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus’’ (Rev. 17: 6). 
Persecutions were unfortunately confined to no branch 
of the Church in the gray light of the times that 
followed the long night of the Dark Ages; but the 
Churches of the Reformation long ago repented in 
sack-cloth and ashes of their very small share in such 
disgraces. 

6. Chor Sat#rim, nt}riy]no-n, * A Cavern of Mys- 
teries,’’? identifies Zephaniah’s verbal figure of the 
fallen Church by the same significant name that St. 
John saw written upon the forehead of the Scarlet 
Woman—the very same radicals, ST R—a name 
suggestive of Eleusis and of Pergamus,’’ ‘where 
Satan dwelleth’’ (Rev. 2: 13), and of the rites of 
Cybele and Bacchus and Isis, and more especially of 
seeks to amend the text here as illogical because he does not see 


that the Image is the make-believe Roman Empire of the Middle 
Ages. 


248 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


that most dangerous rival of the early Church, the 
Mithraic counterfeit of Christian worship whose 
mysteries were always celebrated in a cavern, either 
natural or artificial. It stands, therefore, for all 
those form-worshipping perversions of the ancient 
revelation that were mingled together in the syn- 
cretism of Classic Rome and that formed, like the 
title Pontifex Maximus, part of the heritage of 
Ceesar’s spiritual successor—the ‘‘Golden Cup full of 
abominations’’ that the woman held in her hand, and 
by which “‘all the nations’’ have been debauched and 
“are fallen’’ (Rev. 17: 4; 18: 3, 6). 

Countless indeed are the secret and hidden things, 
the “mysteries,” of the Fallen Church, but in them 
all the abomination of desolation is the worship of 
the Beast (the ‘‘First Beast’? of the Apocalypse— 
Rev. 13: 1 ff.), the worship of the evil spirit of self- 
aggrandizement and universal exploitation incarnate 
in Imperial Rome. Her multitude of cults and con- 
gregations and chapters and brotherhoods and sister- 
hoods, made up as they are of men and women whose 
natural ties to home and country have been broken 
and whose interests are consequently wholly wrapped 
up in the fortunes of their mother, the Church, have 
inevitably been peculiarly susceptible to the tempta- 
tion to make a religion of the glory and wealth and 
power and authority of the ancient and imposing 
institution itself, a religion that finds its ideal, not 
in the meek and lowly Nazarene, but in ‘‘the grandeur 
that was Rome,” the religion of ‘“‘the worshippers of 
Saturn.” 

As worshippers of the ‘‘Beast,”’ or “‘ Worshippers of 
Saturn,” all these children of the Great Harlot are, 
like their mother, branded with his name (Cf. Rev. 


THE LITTLE BOOK 249 


13: 16, 17, etc.). Each of them is a “mystery’’; 
and the Hebrew name-form of ‘‘ Mystery,” the name 
written upon the forehead of the Harlot and upon the 
foreheads of her children, the name of their god, is 
the otherwise obsolete passive participle Satdr, 
“[ijnp, ‘‘Hidden’’ (See Num. 13: 13). Now Satér or 
Satér, in either case 1[1]ND, was the original form* of 
the name of Saturn, who, as we have already had 
occasion to observe, was the patron deity of Rome 
from whom the city was anciently called Saturnia, 
a name that was afterward poetically applied to the 
whole of Italy. This pronouncement of the Great 
Name agrees, therefore, with the prophecies of the 
Reverse of the Great Oracle, in which the Apostate, 
Kamani, is identified with Babylon the Great through 
the paronomasia that pictures him as a worshipper of 
Ka’amanu, the Babylonian equivalent of the Roman 
Saturn, the star that was anciently dedicated to 
Cheres-Nergal-Molech (See Am. 5: 26). 

That Satér, "1nd, is indeed the nameof the Beast 
and brands these ‘‘mysteries’’ as children of the 
Great Apostasy is confirmed by the criterion provided 
by the apocalyptist himself—not as a primary proof 
but as a corroboration—" Here is wisdom. He that 
hath understanding, let him count the number of the 
beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is 
six hundred and sixty-six’? (Rev. 13: 18). Satir, 
as we have seen, is in Hebrew the name of a man, and 
in Latin it is the name of the personification of Rome, 

* Schwegler, Roem. Gesch., p. 223, regards Satur, derived from 
Sero, ‘‘to sow,” as the original form of the name of Saturn. 
Daremberg and Saglio, Dict. d’Antiq. Grecques et Romaines, 
Vol. 4, p. 1086 a, refer it to either Satur or Sator, and the latter 
spelling is found in the metrical encyclopedia of Martinus 
Capella. 


250 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


its tutelary deity—and its number is 60 + 400 + 6 
+ 200, or 666;* and so is that of its translation 
Aaretvos,t or Latinus, “Hidden” (30 + 1 + 300+ 5 
+ 10+ 50+ 70 + 200 + 666), which is the eponym 
of the Latin race and the name of its language, the 
sacred language of the Latin or Roman Church, the 
dead language in which its heritage of Truth is 
“hidden.” 

Furthermore, this speech of old Rome, the voice of 
the dragon (Rev. 13: 11), was made characteristic 


of the Western Church to the exclusion of all vernac- 


ulars by decree of Pope Vitalian, whose name is an 
anagram of Valentia, the “secret’’ name of Rome, 
just 666 years after the birth of Christ (6. Dec. 25, 
B.C. 5) and exactly 1260 years ago—in accordance 
with the number of Saturim, ‘‘mysteries,’”’ as written 
in the Oracle, OD5ND, 60 -++ 400 -++ 200 + 600, or 1260 
(See Rev. II: 2). 

And finally, that the ‘coincidences’’ may form a 
complete ‘‘design,’’ the ‘‘Mark”’ of the Beast, as 
well as his ‘‘ Name” and ‘‘ Number ”’ and the ‘‘ Times’’ 
of his dominion (1260 years = “Time, Times and 
half a Time’’), is found in this same reading of the 
Little Book. For, construed aD ]aDJno-sj4, it brands 
these Saturim, these “‘mysteries,’’ with Cheth-Resh, 
or Chi-Rho, %, the Cross of Constantine. 

7. Cheres tarum, Dun DIN, * Thou, O Cheres, shalt 
be exalted.’”? Thus speaks the False Prophet of Baal; 
and, as in every clever falsehood, there is a measure of 
truth in his exultant vaticination. 

Cheres we have learned to know as the typical 
representative of the Ba‘alim that were characteristic 


* See Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, pp. 440 ff. 
{ So Irenzeus—See any Bible Dictionary. 





THE LITTLE BOOK 251 


of the apostasy that had filled up the cup of the 
iniquity of Ancient Canaan to overflowing, and that 
it was one phase of the mission of Joshua as a type 
of the Messiah to purge out of the Land of Promise. 
The hope of the False Prophet, therefore, as expressed 
in this prediction, is that the Apostasy of which the 
worship of the Burning Sun was the horrible example, 
though exorcised from Israel according to the flesh, 
would return triumphant to debauch Spiritual Israel— 
and the Great Apostasy, with its worship of Saturn 
(whose star assimilates him to the Babylonian Nergal 
and the Canaanite Baal-Cheres-Molech) and with its 
unnumbered autos da fe’ that outrivaled the abomina- 
tions of the Valley of Hinnom, is in fearful fulfilment 
of the measure of truth it contains; and so also is the 
exaltation of the war-god during the age now closing, 
for we must remember that Cheres was the original 
name of Ares, or Mars, the Son of Saturn, to whom 
the Roman Cross, no less than the Roman Eagles it 
represents, has been especially dedicated. We shall 
soon see, however, how unenduring is the tinsel of 
truth with which the words of the False Prophet are 
gilded. 

It will be noticed that these characterizations of the 
Apostasy are derived from reverse readings of the 
corrupted cryptogram of the Name of the Nazarene; 
and this is in keeping with the claim that the Papal 
Empire is the final and consummate earthly mani- 
festation of the Kingdom of Heaven, that Rome is the 
terrestrial counterpart of the Celestial City of the 
New Jerusalem, and that its imperial Pontiff is the 
Vicar of Christ on Earth. 

VII. THE SEconD ADVENT. The apocalyptic figure 
by which Zephaniah characterizes the Second Advent 


252 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


is the picturesque and significant reversal of the 
Proclamation of the First Advent. The features of 
the Parousia are accordingly presented in the ana- 
grams of the seven readings in which the Great Name 
sets forth its epitome of the Gospel; and it will even 
be found that the temporal sequence of these anagrams 
is the same as that of the obverse readings from which 
they are derived. It will be observed, moreover, 
that there is a suggestive relationship of thought, 
a striking antithesis, between each obverse and its 
reverse; and that there is also a close parallelism be- 
tween these pictures and those of the New Testament 
Apocalypse. 

1. Christ-Ne’um, a(slsnpin, and its alternative 
Corets Ne’um, OL8]3°pn, are very properly anagrams of 
Manna Tsitr-’Ach, mixlm{iis jo, the doctrinal pro- 
nouncement of the Gospel epitome, which enshrines 
the truth concerning the person of the Mighty One 
incarnate and the work he accomplished in his First 
Advent; for they, on the other hand, set forth the 
truth concerning the person and offices of the Re- 
deemer at his Second Coming—he is to be “‘ The 
Word of God, the Christ and the Judge.” 

There is here indeed a very evident and significant 
contrast between Obverse and Reverse. The first, 
tells of “the ROCK our Brother” in whom God 
humiliated himself, took upon himself our human 
nature, and shared the death that is our portion, in 
order that we might share his life—gave himself 
without reserve to be our Spiritual “‘Manna,” the 
Bread of Heaven freely offered to all humanity, and 
spurned, alas! by so many. In the Reverse, on the 
other hand, the Coming One is exalted as the glorified 
WORD OF GOD to whom we owe allegiance as the 


THE LITTLE BOOK 253 


Christ, the Lord’s Anointed, and to whom as the 
Judge inexorable we must render account—the Judge 
_ who will pronounce the doom of those to whom in the 
Gospel proclamation he has vainly offered himself 
as the Suffering Savior, the Bread of Life. 

2. Chor-Satan ham, oth] wan (from III. wn), 
“ He will discomfit the Pit of Satan.”? This anagram 
very evidently foretells the initial triumph of the 
King of Kings and Lord of Lords over the forces of 
Darkness (Rev. 16:16;17:14;19:19ff.). Itis there- 
fore appropriately the reverse, both in form and in 
thought, of the first formula of the Little Book’s 
Life of Jesus, the reading that refers to him as the 
seemingly helpless Babe of Bethlehem, Mah Netser 
*Ach, ‘Alas, what a Netser—what a fragile little 
shoot—is our Brother.” 

3. Chor-Saian nam, piyoean, * The Pit of Satan 
shall slumber.” The Powers of Darkness are here 
represented as decisively defeated—not necessarily 
as utterly annihilated, but as overwhelmed and 
silenced for a while, as “put to sleep,” oO. It is the 
condition of affairs, as the New Testament apoc- 
alyptist pictures it (Rev. 20, 1-3), that will obtain 
when the Old Serpent is banished from the World 
and shut up for a thousand years in the Pit where he 
belongs; and it is accordingly foretold in the anagram 
of “‘Nazarene,’”’ Min- Natserach, the name that the 
Victor owes to his own banishment to Nazareth in the 
days of his humiliation and his long obscurity among 
the caverns of that ‘Place of Sepulture.”’” St. John 
tells us that ‘“when the thousand years are finished, 
Satan shall be loosed out of his prison’’ (Rev. 20: 7), 
but only for ‘‘a little season’’ and for the complete 
outworking of his own undoing—and even so Resh 


254. HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


and Rome itself (Cf. Gog and Magog) reappear in the 
next anagram, but only to be brought to judgment 
and to be made to contribute to the final exaltation 
of Christ. 

4a. Chartis Rém, oly} yhjon, Rome shall be 
judged inexorably.”? The victories of the preceding 
prophecies were both primarily in the spiritual realm— 
over the Pit of Satan, the Powers of Darkness— 
though of course the battles must also be thought of 
as fought on the fields of Earth against the human 
dupes of the tempter and so as involving the use of 
carnal as well as spiritual weapons; but now the 
triumph is set forth in terms of its visible effect on 
the life of Earth, ROME, the typical and supreme 
example of evil enthroned in human institutions, in 
the state and even in the church, is brought to final 
judgment. It is not merely to be subdued for a 
season; but, in the language of St. John, is to be cast 
into the Lake of Fire, which is the second death. It 
was Rome, openly hostile and draconian, that of old 
crucified him who is now the victor; it is Rome dis- 
guised as a lamb, that has crucified the Lord anew in 
the body of his Church—and it will evidently be 
some form of Rome that Gog and Magog will vainly 
attempt to restore. Rome is indeed the consummate 
incarnation of the Great Adversary who, by the 
intrusion of his venomous Resh (which is the initial 
of Rome) into the text of Scripture, transformed the 
Proclamation of the Voice of the Day of Jehovah into 
Mar Tsoreach, a taunting reference to the “bitter 
cry”’ of the Suffering Savior, seemingly vanquished 
by the Evil One and nailed to the cross, the charac- 
teristic implement of Roman torture. The judgment 
upon Rome is therefore, in accordance with poetic 


THE LITTLE BOOK 255 


justice, written in the reverse of Martsoreach, My, 
the third biographical reading of the gospel epitome— 
and so also is the companion prophecy of the triumph 
of the World’s Redeemer, which follows. 

4b. Christ Ram, D7 noon, “ Christ shall be exalted,” 
is at once the perfect antithesis and the inevitable 
consequence of the lifting up of the Nazarene upon 
the Cross; for he said, “And I, if I be lifted up, will 
draw all men unto me.” It sets before us the full 
manifestation of his kingdom; for Christ will be 
exalted in all the earth, only when the whole of 
humanity shall have been purged of the last lingering 
remnant of the pollution of which Resh is the symbol 
and Rome is the supreme example. 

5. Christ Yinna’em, dooxj3s non, * Christ will reveal 
himself.”? This is the reverse reading of Muinne- 
Tserzach, *noy73d, “‘From the Grave.”’ Theverb here 
is the denominative Na’am, and it may be regarded as 
put in the imperfect tense in order to make certain 
its discrimination from the noun Ne’um. It is also 
put most appropriately in the reflexive conjugation— 
Christ will come down from Heaven as he came up 
from the grave, revealing himself to his own and on 
occasion. It is significant that this prediction is the 
reverse of a construction that reserves it for the fourth 
and last place in the chronological series that has to 
do with earth-life, or immediately before the two 
synchronous pronouncements that herald the con- 
summation of the ages, when Earth and Heaven 
shall be one. 

6a. Chartts Hinnom,jomnyh}in, “ Hinnom ?’— 

*So written in I. Sam. 13: 6. 


ft In 13, of which O37 is the reverse, the letter M is only the 
carrier of a vowel, but it is conventionally treated as a consonant, 


256 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


by which we necessarily understand Ge-Hinnom— 
“will be judged inexorably.” This is indeed the 
Last Judgment stated specifically in its extreme 
application—it is the last act of the Mighty One as 
Chorets, the Judge upon the Great White Throne 
(Rev. 20: 11 ff.). It'is therefore most appropriately 
the warning of the reverse of Mannah tsé Riach, 
non [8 730, the Gospel reading that tells of the Mis- 
sion of the Holy Spirit, who during the whole period 
of God’s long-suffering patience “strives with men,” 
convicting ‘‘the World in respect of sin, and of 
righteousness and of judgment’’ (John 16: 8). 

In this obverse there are, however, two equal 
cesure, and so its reverse admits of two construc- 
tions. The second is the complement of the first, 
and completes the correspondence at this point be- 
tween the first and the last of the apocalypses. 

66. Char Satan-Neum, oisirywrn, ‘The Ad- 
versary of the Word of God shall be burned up.” 
The picture presented here in outline is exactly the 
closing scene of the Last Judgment. It is the execu- 
tion of the sentence upon the guilty, just as it is 
painted by St. John: ‘And death and Hades were 
cast into the Lake of Fire. ‘This is the second death, 
even the Lake of Fire. And if any was not found 
written in the book of life, he was cast into the Lake 
of Fire’’ (Rev. 20: 14, 15). 

7. Cheres tanam, pinoin. This is the utmost vision 
of the future granted by the Spirit of Prophecy. 
Indeed it is the utmost possible—nay, rather it opens 
and this is its first impression. It therefore permits and suggests 
alternative anagrams, one in which it is retained as a consonant 
and another where regarded as a vowel—this suggestion is rein- 


forced by the two equal cesure of the construction in the 
obverse. 


THE LITTLE BOOK 257 


the vistas of the ‘‘ Boundless Heritage’’ far beyond the 
reach of earthly vision, for it is impossible for our 
present inexperience even to imagine ‘‘the things that 
God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 
2:9). This grand truth is shadowed forth in the very 
form of the oracle, for it suggests these ineffable 
things only negatively, by contrast with a progressive 
three-fold glimpse of the future as it concerns all 
other existences with which the Church is now associ- 
ated: (a) the doom of her great Adversary, the 
traitor within; (0) the sweeping away of all hostile 
conditions and personalities without; and (c) the 
final destruction even of the material universe itself 
when the purposes of its creation have been ac- 
complished—three visions that are presented by the 
three historic applications of the name Cheres. 

(a) This pronouncement of the Spirit of Prophecy 
is the original of which the vaticination of the False 
Prophet, Cheres tarum (See the 7th reading of the 
6th chapter of this Little Book), is the perversion 
wrought by the substitution of the Resh of the Father 
of Lies for the Nun of the Word of God; and it will 
be seen that the gilded falsehood, ‘‘Thou, O Cheres, 
shalt be exalted,” is in flat and seemingly plausible 
contradiction to the truth it supplanted; for Cheres 
tanam reads, *‘ Thou, O Cheres, shalt slumber ’’— 
or, as the Psalmist uses the verb (Ps. 76: 6), ‘* shalt 
sleep the sleep of death.’? When this prophecy was 
hidden in the Little Book of the Great Name in the 
time of Zephaniah, the old Canaanitish apostasy was 
still very much alive, even in Jerusalem (Cf. Zeph. 
I: 4-9, etc.), but it was utterly exterminated from the 
land by the Captivity; and though it has indeed 
awaked, as from the Bottomless Pit, to fearful activity 


258 HID TREASURES OF ZEPHANIAH 


in the Great Apostasy of Spiritual Israel, its doom is 
sealed by the erasure of Resh from the text of Holy 
Writ and the restoration of Nun to the prophecies 
of the Great Name. The day is at hand when 
“‘ Cheres,”’ the God of the Burning Sun—the Apostasy 
of which he is the symbol—shall go the way of all evil 
and transitory things, “‘shall fall asleep’”’ and, after 
a brief resurgence in Gog and Magog, shall finally 
“sleep the sleep of death’’; but the Church herself, 
redeemed and purified, shall survive victorious and 
more glorious than ever. 

(6) The Final Consummation is represented in the 
Book of Revelation by the vision of the holy city, 
New Jerusalem, the ‘New City of Peace,’’ coming 
down from God out of heaven (Rev. 21: 2 ff.) and in 
accordance with the significance of the name of the 
holy city, and remembering that Cheres was the 
Semitic equivalent of Aves- Nergal-Mars, the ancient 
personification of War, this construction may be 
rendered: ‘*Thou, O War, shalt slumber ’’—shalt 
finally ‘‘ sleep the sleep of death.” The strife that 
has disfigured the life of earth so long and so com- 
pletely that some of our wise men have come to regard 
it as an integral part of the very laws of existence and 
even of progress, the turmoil because of which “‘the 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain to- 
gether until now’’ (Rom. 8: 22), shall be silenced for- 
ever by the Coming One, the King of Righteousness 
and the Prince of Peace. 

(c) Cheres tanam is, however, even more strikingly 
suggestive of the closing words of St. John’s descrip- 
tion of the holy city, New Jerusalem: “ And there shall 
be night no more; and they need no light of lamp, 
neither light of sun; for the Lord God shall give them 


THE LITTLE BOOK 259 


light, and they shall reign for ever and ever’’ (Rev. 
22: 5)—for the literal meaning of Cheres tanam is, 
‘Thou, O Noon-day Sun, shalt fall asleep.” ‘The 
verb Nim, D1, primarily means “‘to grow drowsy, 
to become inactive,’ and then it means ‘‘to sleep the 
sleep of death’’; and this apt picture of the final 
gradual decline of the vital fires of our solar system is 
the more significant because of its tremendously sug- 
gestive contrast with the picture presented by Menath- 
Serach, mona, of which Cheres tanam,03n DN, is the 
exact anagram, and in which the Gospel epitome 
tells of the “‘Boundless Heritage’? that our Elder 
Brother has gone to prepare for us, the heritage eternal 
in the heavens foreshadowed in Timnath Serach, the 
prophetic pronunciation given by Joshua of old to the 
city he chose as his portion in the earthly Canaan into 
which he had lead the ancient people of God. From 
this heritage, boundless and eternal, the sons of God 
and joint heirs with our Elder Brother will watch with 
keen but serene interest as the Sun “‘grows drowsy 
and inactive, and finally sleeps the sleep of death.” 

Wonderful indeed is the prophetic import of the 
name “Nazarene.” Well is it called in the Scriptures 
themselves “‘The Chosen Utterance.’”’ It is the one 
utterance in all human speech that is measurably 
adequate to the high uses for which it was chosen :— 
to be the name of him whose is “‘the name which is 
above every name,’’ the name “‘at which every knee 
shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ 
is LORD to the glory of God the Father’’ (Cf. Phil. 
2: 9-11, and Eph. 1: 17-23), and to be the symbol of 
his Church. 


PART Il 
THE INTERPRETATION 


XV 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 


HE Book of Zephaniah has been regarded as 
“fone of the most difficult books in the prophetic 
canon,” and it has certainly been one of the 

most enigmatic. Everyone felt that it was above all 
others the herald of the Last Day; its vistas included 
the utmost bounds of the age; and yet there was 
revealed no figure that could be definitely identified as 
the Messiah. Now, however, this short and mys- 
terious book is transformed into the most compre- 
hensive and most specific of Messianic prophecies— 
the only one indeed in which the First and Second 
Advents of the Redeemer are explicitly distinguished. 
Elsewhere, it is true, the two pictures of the Suffering 
Servant and the Conquering Christ are clearly drawn, 
but only here are they to be seen in their historic 
relationship. Here too is found the only prophecy of 
the Spiritual presence in which the Word of God 
broods over the deeps of his new creation. 

It is instructive to note, however, that the discrimi- 
nation of these predictions of the two advents is ex post 
facto, and that likewise it was apparently only its 
fulfilment that made known the Lost Prophecy of the 
Name of the Nazarene to St. Matthew. The object 


260 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 261 


of this apocalypse would seem to have been, therefore, 
not primarily to write history beforehand—though it 
has indeed, even when least understood, painted the 
broad outlines of the future in ethical colors to the 
glory of God and the inspiration of his people—but to 
afford to Retrospect, just when needed most, a con- 
firmation of truth and a corrective of error; and to 
enable contemporary Faith to understand the full 
significance of the great events of the day in their 
relation to the Kingdom of Christ, and be “‘ready,” 
able to hear the summons of the Captain, to recognize 
and exemplify his Presence, and to act well its part. 

The First Advent prophecies of the New Book of 
Zephaniah need no further elucidation. They are 
themselves unmistakable, for they have passed from 
prediction to fulfilment; and, in their circumstantial 
correspondence with the Gospel records, they bear 
witness to the historic truth of the Glad Tidings, and 
furnish a solid basis for confidence in those pro- 
nouncements of the book that are still in the realm of 
prophecy and that set forth its great and vital message: 
“Behold, the Bride-groom! Come ye forth to meet 
him.” 

The general import of this message is of course 
already clear, and the implications and applications 
that make it specific have in large part been revealed 
in the unfolding of the book; but the foreshadowings 
of the Parousia whose parallel passages have enabled 
us to interpret the enigmas of Zephaniah are them- 
selves necessarily of such a nature that they have 
come to us freighted with various unfortunate mis- 
conceptions, and these we can correct only by a 
systematic consideration of the teachings of this new- 
old revelation. We must therefore examine its impli- 


262 THE INTERPRETATION 


cations as to the meaning and nature of the Second 
Coming itself, which are to be gleaned from the book 
as a whole; we must see this crowning event of the 
ages in its relation to the typical Restoration of Israel 
according to the flesh, which is promised in the second 
construction of the prophecy; and we must hear the 
summons to the Spiritual Israel of the Church, which 
is the burden of the final apocalyptic construction 
of the book. 

The three short chapters of the Book of Zephaniah 
seem at first glance to promise only a very meager 
revelation concerning the nature and manner of the 
Return of the Redeemer. The pronouncements of its 
three-fold apocalypse, more especially those of the 
Proclamation of the Voice of the Day of Jehovah, 
are however so comprehensive and so_ precisely 
appropriate that they suggest and help to interpret 
the whole cycle of the foreshadowings of this crowning 
event of the ages. And it is indeed in all the implica- 
tions of the term the crowning event of the ages that 
these pronouncements picture; for they are of such a 
character as to harmonize throughout with those 
interpretations of prophecy that neither on the one 
hand imply a break in the continuity: of history and a 
negation of the reality of progress, nor on the other 
resolve the Savior’s promised Return into an even 
more unfortunate unreality. The Presence here 
acclaimed is the culmination of all past progress— 
and will mark the beginning of the end of all past 
regress. Itis therefore itself to be progressive, moving 
on from a beginning that would be all unrecognized 
but for the supernatural portents with which it is to be 
marked for our instruction and inspiration—and that 
are here identified for that purpose—to a consumma- 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 263 


tion entirely beyond the conception of our present 
inexperience. From the point of view of our ignor- 
ance, the Second Advent is indeed altogether super- 
natural, but it is painted here in colors that blend on 
the horizon with the familiar landscape of nature, 
just as did the equally supernatural First Advent to 
the eyes of the world at large. 

The nature of the Presence of the Savior peculiar 
to the Second Advent and the reason for the super- 
lative potency ascribed to it are to be learned first 
of all from the name given him in the Third Proclama- 
tion of the Voice of the Day of Jehovah, for in the 
usage of the Bible, as has been well remarked by a 
well known scholar, “‘The name stands for the man 
(or whoever is named) and all therein implied—his 
personality.”* This name must of course be inter- 
preted in the light of the sequence in which it is found, 
the successive names of the Mighty One given or 
assumed in the three proclamations. In the first, 
the name implied was unquestionably Jehovah, the 
name of God in his covenant relation to Israel of old— 
God coming down into the life of humanity. In the 
second it was Nazarene, the place-name of him who 
“took flesh and dwelt among us,’’ which carries with 
it also, through its reference to the oracular name of 
Joshua the Son of Nun of Timnath-serach and to the 
symbolism of the Protevangel, his personal name, 
and his patronymic as well, as they are set forth in 
the ancient token of the Church, ‘‘ Jesus the Christ the 
Son of God our Savior,’”’ and the Son of Man, the Seed 
of the Woman, and the putative Son of Joseph. 
Nazarene, it will be observed, is just the part of the 


* R. H. Charles, The Revelation of St. John, Vol. II., p. 391, 
note 2. 


264 THE INTERPRETATION 


name of the Christ that is most appropriate to the 
proclamation that hails his advent as the Suffering 
Savior, for it is peculiarly suggestive of the divine 
condescension of Him who, “existing in the form of 
God, counted not the being on an equality with God 
a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the 
form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; 
and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled 
himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, 
the death of the cross’’ (Phil. 2: 6-8). The name 
employed in the second proclamation testifies, there- 
fore, that after centuries of effort with the race as a 
whole and with the seed of Abraham in particular, 
the Son of God had arrived at the first goal of his 
mission of salvation and was entering into humanity, 
assuming all the consequences that the act would 
involve, through the door he had opened in the perfect 
manhood of the Son of the blessed virgin. 

By that same Door, during all the centuries since, 
in his presence through the agency of the Holy Spirit, 
he has been leading mankind—whosoever will—the 
race of whose solidarity he has become partaker, 
whose fortunes he must share, and with which in 
turn he must share his own—for this was the very 
purpose of his incarnation—away from its alignment 
under the dominance of the Old Man and into the 
New Manhood of which he himself is the head. 
During all these centuries also, having in the person 
of our Elder Brother, whose is therefore the name 
which is above every name, won his way back, with 
all that is involved in his new relationship, to the full 
re-possession of the glory that he had laid aside in his 
humiliation, the glory that he had with the Father 
before the foundation of the world—for he ascended 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 265 


into heaven and resumed his seat at the right-hand 
of God the Father, where he ever liveth to make 
intercession for us—he has been preparing a place in 
his Father’s house of many mansions, even in the 
throne-room of God, the all-comprehensive service- 
chamber of the universe, for the new humanity of 
which he is the head, the body whose members are 
being developed for their high calling through the 
agency of the Holy Spirit in the Evangel he instituted 
and that is becoming more and more fully an organism 
expressive of himself. , 

The name employed in the proclamation with which 
the Voice of the Day of Jehovah heralds the Parousia 
bears witness to the fact that the work of the ascended 
and glorified Savior is completed, that he has at- 
tained the second goal of the Great Salvation, for this 
proclamation hails him as Ne’um, ‘‘THE WorRD oF 
Gop,” the glorified Son of Man; and the use made of 
it in the drama that sets forth the Third Apocalyptic 
construction of the book bears witness also to the 
fact that, notwithstanding the Great Apostasy, the 
work of his Spiritual presence with his Church is also 
completed—the inner development of the Church 
has reached a point where it is ready to leap forth 
into such a manifestation of its rightful relationship 
to him that it will be able to receive and exemplify 
his full Presence. It announces therefore that he is 
coming again according to his promise to undertake 
the final task involved in the incarnation, ‘And if 
I go and prepare a place for you, I come again and 
will receive you unto myself; that where I am there 
ye may be also”’ (John 14: 3). He has himself pre- 
pared a place for the earth-born sons of God; and 
through the Holy Spirit he has won from the world 


266 THE INTERPRETATION 


the several members of an organism small but com- 
pletely functioning and thoroughly adequate to the 
purposes immediately in hand, the chosen few who, as 
represented by the holy martyrs (Rev. 20: 3), have 
already explicitly and_fully accepted his divine and 
life-giving Spirit—of which the seal is the sacrificial 
love exemplified on Calvary and represented by the 
pictograph of Jesus on the Cross, *—the mystically 
numbered One Hundred and Forty-four Thousand 
who follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth; and 
now, their “‘number’’ complete,* he is coming to 
receive unto himself this earnest of the new humanity 
and to organize them into that manifestation of 
himself in a glorified manhood through which he is to 
bring the world as a whole—as many as will—into 
the place prepared for us. 

The Presence heralded in the third proclamation 
is, therefore, that of the perfected catalyst of the new 
and divine allotrope of humanity, that most potent 
Presence in which he will utterly dissolve the hopeless 
conglomerate of the world as it is—to gather out of it, 
on the one hand, from all regions and races and ages, 
such as have received him incipiently or potentially, 
and bring them into actual participation in the new 
fellowship, into complete conformity to the new 
Spirit, and into the fullness of the new life; and, on 
the other hand, to deliver the new humanity from 
the dead body of the old. He is coming to resolve 
the abnormal dualism of Earth-life, to destroy the 
degenerate secondary personality that constitutes its 
obsession by the Prince of Darkness, and to restore, 

* Strange that any should fail to observe that this number is 


entirely mystical like the seven eyes and seven horns of ons Lamb 
(Rev. 5:6). Itis 12 X 12 X 1000. 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 267 


by the influence of his Presence and the power of a 
new affection, its moral and spiritual integrity under 
the henceforth impregnable dominance of the true 
type of personality that he himself shares and that 
therefore shares with him and through him the 
illimitable resources of the divine nature. 

The name by which the Coming One is heralded, 
Ne’um, “THE WORD OF GOD,” represents him as 
robed in all the unapproachable glory of his deity, 
even according to the revelation voiced in his high- 
priestly prayer, ‘‘And Now, Father, glorify thou me 
with the glory which I had with thee before the world 
was”? (John 17: 5). This implies that he will be 
invisible to the merely earthly eye; and it isin harmony 
with this implication that the Third Construction of 
the Apocalypse of Zephaniah represents the Parousia 
as beginning, so far as its manifestation to the world 
is concerned, with the Spiritual presence that is to 
quicken the Church, the Body of Christ, with the 
power of his glorified humanity—the fullness of that 
Baptism of Fire of which the out-pouring at the Feast 
of First-fruits was the promise. 

Apostasy’s forfeiture of the gift of the Holy Spriit 
and the promise of its restoration in full measure after 
the visitations of the Day of Jehovah shall have 
brought correction, is the burden of the mystical con- 
struction of the Book of Zephaniah that finds in the 
unfaithfulness of Jerusalem of old and in her Baby- 
lonian and Roman captivities types of Babylon the 
Great, and that finds also a promise of the New Jeru- 
salem in the prophet’s song of joy :—“‘Sing, O daughter 
of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all 
thy heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. Jehovah hath 
cast out thine enemy: the King of Israel, even Jehovah, 


268 THE INTERPRETATION 


is in the midst of thee; thou shalt not fear any more, 

. . . Jehovah thy God is in the midst of thee, a 
Mighty One who will save’? (Zeph. III. 14, 15, 17). 
The loss by the Church conformed to the World of 
the Spiritual presence of the Master, is specifically 
pictured in the Vision of the Emptied Cup (Part IT., 
Chap. XII.); and its full restoration to the Church 
redeemed from its apostasy at the Second Coming, is 
set forth in the Anagram of the corrected phrase 
Kert min Nani, “Their wine shall be inexhaustible.’’ 

That in truth, while the coming of the Spirit of 
Life, which was the birth of the Church, could only 
follow after the Incarnation of the Word of God, was - 
indeed its consummation, we are nevertheless to look 
for the New Birth of the Church, the Spiritual pres- 
ence of the Redeemer restored to the penitent and 
given to all in the full harvest abundance of which its 
Pentecostal power was only the first-fruits, as the 
initial and primary characteristic of the Parousia, 
is evident from the fact that it is set forth apocalypti- 
cally, not in a consecutive section of the text, which 
would have implied that it was to follow the personal 
appearance of our glorified Elder Brother, but in the 
Seals and Counter-seals and Stigmata of the Seven 
Prophecies of the Oracle of the Great Day of Jehovah, 
the Seven Thunders whose portents are the immediate 
harbingers of the Day of the Lord. Furthermore, 
that the Parousia will not supersede the Spiritual 
presence but must certainly be based upon it, is evi- 
dent from the Savior’s promise, ‘And I will pray the 
Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that 
he may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth”’ 
(John 14 : 16, 17. cf. Matt. 28 : 20)—and this is also 
in accordance with the nature of the Church as the 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 269 


Body of Christ and with the daily and hourly needs 
of its world-wide membership. 

The Book of Zephaniah leaves us in no doubt, 
however, that in due season we shall also see the face 
of our glorified Elder Brother, the Head of the Church 
himself, that indeed ‘‘we shall see him as he is’’; for 
this is the unquestionable implication of the Second 
Construction of the Apocalypse, where the parallelism 
demands that the Second Advent, while on a loftier 
plane, shall nevertheless follow the analogy of the 
First. And since the First Advent included both an 
open Epiphany, in which was the revelation it brought, 
and a Spiritual presence, in which is its transforming 
power, the parallelism demands that the Second Ad- 
vent Presence shall likewise have its open Epiphany 
as well as its spiritual manifestation; and this is in 
accordance with the unquestionable expectation of the 
disciples and with the revelation in the Master’s 
prayer, “Father, I desire that they also whom thou 
hast given me, be with me where I am that they may 
behold the glory which thou hast given me’”’ (John 
17: 24)—which more than implies that we shall also 
share that glory (John 17: 22). The Presence for 
which we look is therefore to be the consummation 
of all the manifestations of God in the life of humanity 
—for while it is indeed Jesus of Nazareth who is 
coming again, it is also Jehovah of Hosts, the Mighty 
One heralded in the first proclamation of the Voice of 
his Day, for whom we look, a providential inter- 
position of the Mighty to Save and the Mighty 
Avenger—and we may conclude that, so far as our 
perception of it is concerned, it will pass in due course 
from the unseen, the providential and spiritual, to the 
personal and visible. 


270 THE INTERPRETATION 


In harmony with these conclusions, St. Pual 
describes the return of the Lord as beginning “‘in the 
air’’ (I. Thes. 4: 17), and tells us that, like the ap- 
pearances of the risen though not yet glorified Naz- 
arene, which were not seen by the world at large, not 
even by the soldiers who guarded his tomb, but only 
by his own disciples, the Return of the glorified Re- 
deemer with the resurrection hosts of the Church 
Triumphant will be witnessed only by the Church 
Militant, which will be ‘‘caught up”’ to meet him. 

The manner of this revelation is doubtless suggested 
in the prophecy of which the manifestation at Pente- 
cost was a preliminary and exemplary fulfilment: 
‘‘And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will 
pour forth my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and 
your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men 
shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams ”’ 
(Acts 2:17 and Joel 2: 28). The inane abnormalities 
of Spiritism would seem to be Satan’s attempt to 
discount these first revelations of the Lord and the 
hosts of the redeemed with base counterfeits before- 
hand. It is significant and in accordance with this 
interpretation that the word St. Paul uses to picture 
the presence of the Lord and his hosts, whom he 
describes as in the “‘air’’ Canp) is the identical term 
with which he locates the spiritual forces they are to 
supersede, the psychic influences of the evil one, who 
is to be chained and cast out (Rev. 20) at the beginning 
of the Parousia, for he calls him “‘The Prince of the 
Power of the Air Canp), the spirit that now worketh 
in the sons of disobedience’? (Eph. 2: 2). Of like 
significance is the fact that the word “‘caught up” 
Caprdatw), with which he here describes the “‘ Rapture”’ 
of the saints, is the very word with which he tells of 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 271 


his own rapture into the “third heaven,’’ which he 
classes with ‘‘visions and revelations’’ (II. Cor. 
12: I-4). 

It would seem indeed that until our maturity it 
must continue to be inexpedient for us, as it has been 
hitherto—for so the Master himself gives us to under- 
stand in his farewell discourse (John 16: 7)—that our 
free development should be overshadowed by the full 
revelation of a Presence before whom even angels veil 
their faces with their wings. Moreover such a con- 
Spiracy as that of Gog and Magog would seem to be 
an utter impossibility at the close of a millennium 
during which Jehovah incarnate but glorified sat 
visibly enthroned as the omnipotent ruler of the 
nations. In fact the passages of Scripture that imply 
the actual epiphany of Jesus our Elder Brother picture 
him as appearing to none but the true members of the 
household of Faith, and to them only as they are able 
to apprehend spiritual realities. Such passages must 
be construed, therefore, as having reference, not to the 
Premillennial beginning of his Parousia, but to its 
Postmillennial consummation, when the Church will 
have attained its majority and will have conquered 
and assimilated the whole world, and when all man- 
kind will be able therefore to meet him on the higher 
ground of his communicated divinity and share his 
glory, as he met us on the lower ground of his as- 
sumed humanity and shared our limitations. Cf. I. 
Timea Gel Dimas 1, 8 Litus 2:\03. 

The declaration of St. John—‘“‘ Behold, he cometh 
with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they 
that pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth shall 
mourn over him’’ (Rev. 1: 7)—very evidently refers 
to the last judgment; and suggests, not an epiphany 


Ap iP THE INTERPRETATION 


like the First Advent (2 Tim. 1:10), but the theophany 
described in Rev. 14: 14-20, and 20: I1-15. Cf. 
Ezek. 1: 4 ff. Without doubt the other pictures that 
represent the Savior as coming in the clouds of heaven 
are also of the same character—vz. Matt. 24: 30; 
Acts 1: 11. Indeed=these theophanies are them- 
selves unmistakable witnesses to the nature of the 
Parousia, for their only use is to manifest to mortals, 
as occasion may require, the presence of ‘‘the King 
eternal, immortal, invisible’? (Tim. 1: 17); and only 
such a manifestation will fit the Savior’s own descrip- 
tion of his Second Advent: ‘‘For as the lightning 
cometh forth from the East and is seen even unto the 
west; so shall be the Parousia of the Son of Man”’ 
(Matt:'245'27). 

That only the faithful will see the Lord at his final 
Epiphany is assumed and virtually asserted by the 
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who says: 
“So Christ, having been once offered to bear the sins 
of many shall appear (ogé@jcerar) a second time, 
apart from sin (i.e., now no longer a sin-offering), to 
them that eagerly wait for him, unto salvation” 
(Heb. 9: 28). This is also tacitly assumed by St. 
‘John in his First Epistle. Indeed the apostle here 
gives us clearly to understand that it is only in their 
maturity that the saints themselves will be able to see 
their Lord and Master as he is. He writes: ‘‘Be- 
loved, now are we children of God (réxva, ‘children 
with the promise of mature development ’—Westcott) 
and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be, but 
we know that when he shall be manifested (gavepw6y) 
we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”’ 
(I. John 3: 2). The apostle therefore takes it for 
granted that only such as are like him can see him as 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 272 


he is. He takes it for granted also that ‘‘when he 
shall appear,’ the man Christ Jesus will be clothed 
with all the glory of the uncreated WorD whom no 
mere mortal ‘‘hath seen or can see”’ (I. Tim. 6: 16). 

With this interpretation agrees also the suggestive 
contrast between the radical meaning of the name by 
which the Coming One is heralded in the Third 
Proclamation of the Voice of the Day of Jehovah and 
that of the name by which the incarnate Son of God 
was hailed in the Second Proclamation of the Voice. 
For Ne’um, ‘the Word of God,” from Na’am, O83, 
“to speak softly,” in a “still small voice”’ that only 
true believers can hear (Cf. I. Kings 19:12), could not 
be improved upon as a name designed to carry this 
very prophetic import; just as ‘Nazarene,’ by 
homonymy from TJsarach, I. myx, “to shout aloud,” 
is exactly the name appropriate to him who is the 
theme of the Gospel that is to be preached to all 
mankind, and of whom it is said: “‘No man hath 
seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is 
in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”’ 
(John 1: 18). 

To the same effect are the implications of the fact 
that so many prophetic ‘‘signs,” harbingers, marks of 
identification, are provided for the Second Advent— 
its beginnings are to be of such a nature as to require 
them. 

The offices of the Coming One, the operations by 
which he will accomplish his task, are represented by 
the titles given him in the proclamation—and the 
same offices are ascribed to him in all the prophecies 
of his coming, but one of the two is an office hitherto 
held in abeyance (John 12 : 47), and so it is represented 
here by a name hitherto unrevealed (cf. Rev. 19 : 12). 


274 THE INTERPRETATION 


He is to be (1) the Chorets, the “Judge inexorable”’ 
who by his truth and his cooperating providences 
will thoroughly sift the life of Earth and eliminate 
all that is evil; and (2) the Christ, the “ Anointed,” 
the King, who will rule in righteousness and bring 
all the world back into glad allegiance to God the 
Father. But who is this King? He is Jesus of 
Nazareth, the Son of David, the King of Israel; but 
he is also ‘‘The Worp,’’ The Son of God, Jehovah of 
Hosts, the King of Glory. In him therefore the 
aberrant Kingdom of Israel (Cf. II. Sam. 8: 4-22; 
and 10: 19) reverts to Shiloh (now, ov, nbw = dw. 
Cf. BDB, p. 1010 a), “‘Him to whom it belongs,” 
the only legitimate heir of original sovereignty in all 
the universe, and is merged in the restored Theo- 
democracy—restored and extended to its rightful 
bounds and conformed to its true ideal—the world- 
wide commonwealth of Spiritual Jsra-El, in which 
our Elder Brother is to rule as King of kings and 
Lord of lords both by heredity and by the free choice 
of his people. 

The identity of the name and titles of the Coming 
One with the apocalyptic symbol of the Church, 
purged of Resh and with Né#n restored, assures us that, 
notwithstanding all our lapses and follies and failures, 
the manifestation of the Presence of the Master will 
not be in supercession of his Church but through the 
Church purged and transformed, the historic Church 
as an institution but cleansed of the Apostasy that 
has worshipped the “ Beast’ as its Christ—the Anti- 
Christ pictured in the sullied symbol Christ-Rém, 
pa-npan—and become once more truly Christian in all 
respects, not only in the good deeds of its simple- 
hearted saints but in the purposes, plans, and methods 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 275 


of its organization as well, become in truth—as 
Christ- Ne’um, arnoin, the reverse reading of the 
restored symbol indicates—the revelation, the in- 
carnation, of the Second Advent Presence of the 
Worp oF Gop, the glorified Christ. The Church is 
indeed the body of which Christ is both the vitalizing 
Spirit and the living Head. Its members are there- 
fore his members, the members through which he has 
worked on earth during all the Christian centuries; 
and it is through them that he will continue to work 
until he has accomplished his purposes. 

The truth that struggles for expression through the 
mystic metaphor of “‘the body of Christ’’ would seem 
to require a following of the analogy even so as to 
include St. Paul’s discrimination between the ‘‘cor- 
ruptible”’ and ‘mortal,’ or “‘natural,’’ body of the 
human Psyche, and the “incorruptible” and ‘“im- 
mortal’’ body of the heaven-born Pneuma (I, Cor. 
15: 35 ff.). A natural and alas! corruptible body is 
the Visible Church. It is indeed the “‘salt of the 
Earth,” but it is the salt of the Earthly Holy Land 
(Matt. 5: 13) and is itself only salted because there 
is within it the invisible body of the life-giving Spirit, 
the true Church of the twice-born in Heaven and on 
Earth elect through the ages and joined in one through 
the communion of saints in the unity of Christ our 
Head (Cite phi'4:'3 ff): 

At the time of the Second Coming of Christ, this 
Invisible Church, his Spiritual body, is to be com- 
plete—not complete with regard to any supposed 
complement of numbers, for it will never cease to 
grow in stature until its full maturity in the Consum- 
mation, but complete in all its functions—and so it 
will be able to be the agent of the fuller revelation 


276 THE INTERPRETATION 


of his presence and power that will constitute the 
Parousia (Rev. 14: I-5). It is to be the first-fruits 
of the harvest; and as it conquers enemy after enemy 
and finally even the last of foes (Rev. 20: 4-6; 1 Cor. 
15:51; 1, Thes. 4: 15, 17), it will be a living and more 
and more convincing ‘witness to the full meaning of 
the Great Salvation. 

Is is through the natural body, however, that the 
Spiritual life within must operate upon the life of the 
natural world outside, and so it is through the Church 
as an organization that the pronouncements of the 
Judge must be published and the decrees of the King 
carried out. Behind the scenes in the mysterious 
realm of Providence God works for righteousness, and 
over the deeps of every created being the Holy Spirit 
broods unceasingly; but it was only by his incarnation 
in the First-Born among many brethern that the Word 
of God could initiate his work of regeneration in 
human life; and it is only as he is incarnate in the 
Visible Church that he can regenerate human society. 
The “Rapture’’ of the living saints to meet their 
Lord and their brethern of the First Resurrection 
“in the air’’ (I, Thes. 4: 15, 17) can not be conceived 
of, therefore, as actually taking them out of the 
Visible Church (Cf. John 17: 15) and leaving it a life- 
less corpse; but must be of such a nature, on the 
contrary, as will make them a link between the seen 
and the unseen and enable the Spiritual body to gain 
a greater and greater ascendency over the natural 
and make it a more and more efficient instrument for 
the accomplishment of the divine purposes, finally 
conforming it altogether—and through it the whole 
world, ‘‘ whosoever will ’’—to its own ideal, the likeness 
of Christ, the restored image of God. 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 277 


This truth is typically foreshadowed in the con- 
quest of Canaan under Joshua of old. Gad and 
Reuben and part of Manasseh entered into the pos- 
session of their heritages in the Promised Land with- 
out having to cross the river Jordan (Num. 32: 1-5). 
Nevertheless the warriors of these tribes remained 
with their militant brethern during the whole period 
of the Conquest and fought at the head of the host 
(Deut. 32: 21) in every campaign. It is noteworthy 
in this connection that these tribes were the only 
ones to continue living in tents, “‘pilgrims’’ here 
below like their fathers. They were also children of 
the first-born of the mothers of Jacob’s household. 
Heterodox and schismatic Dan (Judge 18: 30; and 
I, Kings 12: 29-30) was the only one of the four tribes 
of the first-born that was not numbered among the 
original settlers on the eastern shore of the Jordan, 
and this tribe is also omitted from the genealogy of 
Israel as given in I, Chron. 2: 12 and from the list of 
those who were sealed by the angel in the vision of 
St. John (Rev. 7: 5-7). Infact the Danites, though 
they fought loyally with the host during the conquest, 
were long practically portionless in Israel (Judge 18: 1) 
—but there was nevertheless salvation for Dan; he 
also finally took his rightful place among the tribes of 
Israel (Gen. 49:16), and in accordance with the pro- 
phetic vision of Moses (Deut. 33: 22) carved out for 
himself a possession at Laish-Dan in Bashan, east of 
the main sources of the Jordan among the other 
tribes of the first-born—the northernmost of them all, 
for the last shall become first. In the blessings of 
Moses (Deut. 33) there is a peculiar primacy accorded 
these tribes of the first-born; and of Reuben, the 
first-born of the whole family, he says, “‘Let Reuben 


278 THE INTERPRETATION 


live and not die’’ (Deut. 33: 6). Moreover Jacob’s 
remarkable exclamation as he passed from the con- 
templation of the future of Dan to that of Gad (Gen. 
49: 18):—‘‘I have waited for thy Salvation, O Lord” 
—would suggest that here the dying patriarch saw a 
vision of the far more distant future and the in- 
comparably more glorious truths of which the tem- 
poral fortunes of his children were to be prophetic 
types—even the dawn of the New Day and the 
first fruits of the victory over death. 

It is of course not implied that it is only through 
the Church that the power of the Mighty One is to 
be more fully manifested in the coming age. Far 
from it; behind the scenes, as we have just said, in the 
mysterious realm of providence he always “‘works 
his sovereign will’’; and over the deeps of every human 
soul his Holy Spirit broods unceasingly and brings 
forth light and life in ever richer and richer abundance. 
Indeed it is very clearly indicated in the sequence of 
the 8th and 9th verses of the 3d chapter of Zephaniah 
that the first characteristic manifestation of the 
Presence peculiar to the Second Advent is to follow 
a providential interposition of the Mighty One in 
public affairs such as never was known before; and 
we may confidently expect that more and more 
mightily will the divine power be poured out in these 
channels of activity as the spiritual rapport between 
Heaven and Earth becomes closer and closer in the 
ever fuller manifestation of the Parousia, the Presence 
of the Lord and his Spiritual hosts, until at last the 
veil between the natural and the supernatural is rent 
in twain with “the glorious epiphany of the great 
God and our Savior,” the Head of the Church. 

Only through his Church, however, can his Presence 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 279 


as the “Christ’’ be manifested constructively in the 
world as it is, to transform it into what it ought to be; 
and even as the “Judge inexorable”’ he will some- 
times enforce his decrees through the hosts of Israel. 
Yes, the Judge at his coming will smite the nations 
with a sharp sword, but it will be with the sword of 
truth proceeding from the mouth of his Church; he 
will rule them with a rod of iron, but the hand that 
is to hold the rod is the hand of his Church (Cf. Rev. 
2: 26-27)—a Church far worthier than ever before and 
far more responsive to his will, but nevertheless the 
same in historic identity with the Church of the 
Christian Centuries. Even now it is learning to 
wield the rod with effect, not the scepter of despotic 
authority that medizval Apostasy wrested from the 
hand of the Successor of Czesar as it had wrested the 
democratic prerogatives of the Spiritual presence of 
the Elder Brother from the Household of Faith, but 
the mace of enlightened public opinion. This is not 
to say, however, that the Church as an organization— 
for which organization would it be?—is suddenly to 
be exalted as the universally accepted and authorita- 
tive exponent of the truth. It is indeed the very 
opposite that we see transpiring on the frontiers of 
our present social unrest, in Russia and in Germany; 
but, notwithstanding whatever lions’ dens (Dan. 
VI) the passing night may bring, the true Church, an 
organism that has always found expression more or 
less adequate in many and various organizations 
throughout Christendom, is going to manifest itself 
more and more potently as the agent of the Captain of 
our Salvation; and ‘‘ The Church in action,’’ cooperat- 
ing with the Providence of God and writing the 
Eighteenth Amendment into the constitution of the 


280 THE INTERPRETATION 


United States of America, is no uncertain augury of a 
divine Presence and leadership that will not only 
banish the serpent of the wine-cup, but will also bind 
the Old Serpent himself and cast him into the abyss, 
that will do away with all conditions that work in- 
justice, betray virtue, mar happiness, and hide heaven. 

It is indeed a New Dispensation that is coming. 
Hitherto, as has been said, God has been long- 
suffering toward evil; but now conditions are changed. 
The long season of growth is ending and the time of 
harvest is beginning; and first of all the tares are to 
be gathered out, evil is to be eliminated and segregated 
in the abyss, that the peaceable fruits of righteousness 
may be conserved in their purity—and that the meek 
may inherit the Earth. The conditions of society 
during the first years of the reign of Christ and his 
Church are doubtless well described by the poet who 


et 


. . . dipped into the future far as human eye could see, 
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be”’; 


and who tells us that then 


ce 


. . . Lhe common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm 
in awe, 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.” 


The coming age will indeed be characterized by law 
and order; but its law will be, in intention at least, 
the Law of Love, and less and less will it have to be 
enforced upon “‘a fretful realm’ as a law written on 
tables of stone, for it will be written more and more 
convincingly on the tablets of the heart, until finally 
it shall be on Earth altogether what it is in Heaven, a 
self-enforcing law, “‘the perfect law, the Law of 
Liberty.” 

There are still, however, to be both hills and valleys 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 281 


in the onward and upward march of humanity; evil 
is not to disappear as by magic. It is to be over- 
come, put down, circumscribed, hedged in, until it is 
only a smouldering fire; but the word of prophecy, 
which dips into the future far beyond the power of 
the human eye to see, tells us that, by the return of 
the old incorrigibles of earth-life through the con- 
tinual opening of new doorways into the unseen 
realms, the smouldering fire will be fanned into a 
roaring and seemingly all-devouring conflagration— 
a self-consuming conflagration that will quickly burn 
itself out. Having passed final judgment upon them- 
selves, the hosts of Gog and Magog, like the Legion of 
Gadara, will be seen no more. 

The radical nature of the change that is to be 
wrought in the New Dispensation is dramatically 
pictured in the Apocalypse of Zephaniah by the 
literal reversal of the Proclamation of the Voice of 
the Day of Jehovah and of the whole oracle in which 
it is framed. This reversal is not representative, 
however, of any alteration in God’s plans or purposes. 
He has been trying no experiments that were fore- 
doomed to failure; and if there is now to be a change 
of programme, it is not because of a change in the 
divine attitude, but simply in response to new con- 
ditions—new conditions that are themselves the re- 
sult, not of some new departure, but of the orderly 
out-working of God’s original plan of the ages, which 
both obeys and utilizes the laws of development, of 
seed-time and harvest. The coming of “the King of 
the Ages’’ awaits a certain necessary degree of 
readiness to receive him; and while this condition is to 
follow the revolution wrought in the last Great Day 
of Jehovah, it will nevertheless be the result of the 


282 THE INTERPRETATION 


preceding centuries of the preaching of the Gospel, 
and of the concomitant moral, intellectual and material 
advancement that, notwithstanding all its fearful 
faults, notably characterizes the Christendom of to- 
day in comparison with all the other regions and ages 
of the race. The fruit may not appear upon the tree 
until this season’s sun has crossed the line; but it 
comes, nevertheless, from the planting and culture of 
the years gone by. The New Dispensation is ushered 
in by the sweeping revolution of the Last Great Day 
of Jehovah, but it is not for this reason any the lessa 
product of evolution. 

The controversies concerning the Second Advent 
in which some emphasize those teachings of our Lord 
and his apostles that give warning of the great 
cataclysm of the Day that cometh as a thief in the 
night, while others magnify, to the exclusion of all 
else, the parables of the growth of the kingdom, 
arise largely from a misunderstanding of the relation 
between Evolution and Revolution. The idea that 
there is a necessary conflict between them is a heritage 
from the inchoate notion of Evolution as proceeding 
by Infinitesimal Variations and Natural Selection 
that gained currency in the times of its great pro- 
tagonists and has not yet been superseded as the 
normative principle of modern thought by the more 
mature conception of a “Creative Evolution.’’* 
The Doctrine of Evolution is still evolving; but some 
of its features, thanks to the labors of such men as 
Lamarck, the Darwins, Huxley, Spencer, Mendel, 
DeVries, Bergson, may be regarded as now-assuredly 

* This term is used here in acknowledgment of a great debt to 
Henri Bergson; but it is not intended to imply by any means a 


wholesale acceptance of his philosophy as the final expression of 
the truth. 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 283 


fixed; and first and most essential among them, and 
almost all-sufficient as a confirmation of the tradi- 
tional faith and instinctive hope of the race, is the 
fact of Mutation, which implies a spiritual foundation 
for all life, makes room for the plastic hand and the 
brooding Spirit of a Divine Creator, and posits a 
Creative Evolution that works by the slow and 
constant accretion of unseen impulses and tendencies 
but manifests itself in sudden leaps, or “‘mutations.”’ 

In the history of the individual—not to speak of 
the wonderful story retold in his prenatal develop- 
ment—the true doctrine is exemplified by the growth 
that in all things but mere size manifests itself in 
distinct and characteristic periods, childhood, adoles- 
cence, maturity, defined by seasons of stress and 
realignment in accommodation to the new require- 
ments. In the life of the race, new eras are marked 
by the advent of great and constructive personalities, 
the children, on the one hand, of the mute and seem- 
ingly inglorious generations that have preceded 
them, and on the other of the Spirit of God, that 
brooding over the deep still breathes the breath of a 
higher life into the nostrils of each “new creature’”’ 
of the plastic WORD. Their way is prepared by the 
destructive instrumentality of crises, such as the 
Reformation, the French Revolution, the Great War— 
the Day of Jehovah in all its applications—which 
have their hidden causes in the clash of spiritual 
forces. The growing ideals, the pent-up aspirations, 
and the finally irrepressible enthusiasms aroused in 
the heart of humanity by the persistent proclamation 
of the truth to seemingly unresponsive but sub- 
consciously listening ears, at last break through the 
barriers of inertia to battle for the mastery of the 


284. THE INTERPRETATION 


world with the antagonistic passions and sinister 
purposes nourished by Perversity. For it is of the 
nature of evil as well as of good to grow to its maturity 
—to grow in ugliness and in brazen aggressiveness, 
until none can mistake its character or find neutral 
ground on which to escape its challenge, and until 
in its utter insanity no scheme of exploitation is too 
mad for it to undertake, and no consideration of 
prudence can restrain it from dashing itself to destruc- 
tion upon the buckler of the Mighty One, who is in 
the forefront of every battle for righteousness. 

The Day of Jehovah with its many applications is 
therefore the prophetic view of the revolutionary 
phase of the evolution of Society. It finds Jehovah 
actively interested in every crisis of human history; 
and in its final application, it is the liberating cata- 
clysm that allows the accumulated spiritual in- 
fluences of the centuries of Christian growth to leap 
into self-expression in a new era that will be as dif- 
ferent from the preceding age as is the adolescent 
life of the individual from his child life—but just as 
continuous with it. 

Adolescence is however only the prelude to maturity. 
Puberty is indeed the grand change, the physical 
Second Birth of the individual; but the full perfection 
of manhood, with its developed personality and 
fixed character, is not attained until the less pro- 
nounced but no less real change that ushers in ma- 
turity. The suggestion made by this analogy, which 
is in line with the conclusions to which we have already 
come in our study of Zephaniah, is confirmed by the 
direct and specific testimony of St. John, who tells 
us that the complete overthrow of evil and the 
establishment of righteousness on the Earth is not 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 285 


to be the magic work of a day or a year even after the 
Second Advent, but must still be obedient to the laws 
of human development, whose necessary element of 
time is represented apocalyptically as a thousand 
years—tfor this is the teaching, exceedingly reasonable, 
of the much abused Twentieth chapter of the Book 
of Revelation, to which, as we have seen, a parallel 
is found among the word-pictures of the Little Book 
of the Great Name. Born from above, the Divine 
in humanity, conceived as an ideal when the First 
Adam emerged into the dignity of manhood, and 
threatened with forfeiture when he listened to the 
tempter, became a glorious reality with the Advent 
of the Son of God as the Babe of Bethlehem. ‘‘What 
a tender little shoot is our Brother,’’ Mah Netser’ Ach, 
nixjosy3 [n]», is the way the Chosen Utterance calls 
attention to the small beginning of the New Hu- 
manity; but the Little Shoot has become a Great 
Tree, the life of the Son of God and the Son of Man, 
the Spirit-endued life of the race of the Second Adam, 
has been multiplying during the Christian centuries; 
and the Church, the body of Christ, has been growing 
‘“‘in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and 
man.” It is still in its childhood, however (Eph. 
4: 3 ff., I. John 3: 2), and adolescence can come only 
with a fuller endowment of the divine nature in all its 
members, with the potent Presence of our glorified 
Elder Brother, the Second Advent of the WORD OF 
GOD, for which the centuries of growth have been a 
preparation, an Advent whose perfect consummation 
must wait the maturity that will crown ‘‘a thousand 
years’’ of further development. 

Such a transition period as the millennium, which 
begins with the Great Revolution that greets the 


286 THE INTERPRETATION 


coming of the rightful but dispossessed Sovereign of 
humanity and ends with its final reverberation in the 
futile rebellion of “Og and Magog,” is therefore in 
accordance with the philosophy of history underlying 
the prophecies of the Day of Jehovah, is in harmony 
with the Theory of Evolution as it is now understood, 
and is demanded as the complement of the Doctrine 
of the Growth of the Kingdom as interpreted according 
to the analogy of the Body of Christ. 

Concerning the ‘‘Cloud of Witnesses’”’ that even 
now compass us about in expectation (Heb. 12: 1), 
and that are hereafter to be restored to actual con- 
tact with the life of Earth and exercise an ever more 
and more effective influence upon the course of events, 
the New Book of Zephaniah is silent, save for the 
implications of the glad hope that radiates from the 
primary meaning of its master-word, Minne Tseriach, 
myo0, “From the Grave,” the prophetic place-name 
of the “ Nazarene,” the Captain of our Salvation, the 
Joshua of the New Covenant, and the “‘first-fruits’”’ 
of the Resurrection. It is evident, however, that 
their ‘‘ Presence’’ must be of the same nature as that 
of the Captain himself. They will be with him “in 
the air’’ at first and will be openly manifested only 
in accordance with whatever laws of development are 
involved—and in this connection, we remember the 
declaration of the apostle with regard to the resurrec- 
tion body: “It is sown in weakness; it is raised in 
power; it is sown a psychic body; it is raised a spiritual 
body” (I. Cor. 15: 43-44). In other words, it is 
sown a body that in its weakness was yet adequate to 
the needs of the earth-born psyche in its terrestrial 
relationships; but it will be raised a body possessed 
of powers that will even be sufficient for the require- 
ments of the heaven-born spirit. That this body of 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 287 


the spirit will also be able to function on the lower 
physical plane when and as occasion requires was 
exemplified in the manifestations of the Savior himself 
during the forty days between his resurrection and 
his ascension (Luke 24: 38-43; John 20: 24-28). We 
may conclude, therefore, that in the coming age there 
will be a progressive lifting—as we and they are able 
to bear it and profit by it—of the veil that hangs 
between this world and the world as yet unseen; 
and that there will also be a progressive and mutual 
assimilation between the two worlds, so that we shall 
be able to cross the Jordan dry-shod when we have 
completed the lessons of Earth; and they, and all 
of us, shall be able to resume at the proper time what- 
ever Earthly task and development it may be needful 
to complete, under the auspicious conditions of that 
Better Day. 

That the resurrection of the just will not be simply 
for the sake of their influence upon the life of Earth 
but also, and primarily, in view of the reaction upon 
them of contact with Earthly conditions as they 
ought to be, is the evident thought of the apostle 
who wrote concerning the ancient worthies: ‘These 
all, having witness born to them through their faith, 
received not the promise, God having provided some 
better thing concerning us that apart from us they 
should not be made perfect’’ (Heb. 11: 39-40). All 
are to be perfected together—and certainly it is not 
unreasonable to assume that death itself works no 
constructive change in the minds and characters of 
men, and that interaction with terrestrial conditions 
through a corporeal medium provides the one proper 
curriculum for the development of human nature in 
the rudimentary stages from which none of the saints 
of Earth has as yet attained promotion. Few have 


288 THE INTERPRETATION 


lived out the full period required for the ripening of 
character, and none has lived under conditions that 
were ideal for the nurture of Spiritual gifts and 
graces, while it has been the lot of the overwhelming 
majority of mankind to toil in the slow upbuilding of 
the substructure of*society down in the abysmal 
darkness of barbarism—and worse. It is reasonable, 
therefore, to expect that all mankind of every age 
and condition and degree and quality will share in 
the opportunity afforded by the Resurrection, an 
opportunity for complete development and _ un- 
hampered self-expression in some as yet undefined 
and at present incomprehensible but none the less real 
and adequate relation to the superstructure of the 
grand edifice they themselves have helped to build; 
and that, when humanity is sufficiently mature and 
its moral security can no longer be endangered, even 
the positively wicked, the utterly perverse, will also 
come forth from the grave to receive their equal 
opportunity (Rev. 20: 5, 7)—and their own appro- 
priate heritage (Rev. 20: 8-15). 

“With what manner of body”’ the unspiritual shall 
come forth has not been declared; but we may 
readily conclude that the progressively multiplied 
puissance of the Second Advent Presence will finally 
enable every member of the race to recover self- 
expression in whatever manner may in the providence 
of God be feasible and at the same time most congenial, 
such as are “‘of the earth earthy’’ both by necessity 
and by choice only on the physical planes of earth-life 
—from which, however, they will inevitably and 
speedily and finally eliminate themselves. For the 
Law of Sin and Death can never be abrogated, while 
its penalty will no longer be stayed by the Great 
Salvation. Indeed the Word informs us, as we have 


THE PROMISED PRESENCE 289 


just noted, that under the banner of some Caesar 
redivivus they will rush to destruction ez masse, 
doubtless, in their blind fury against the then estab- 
lished order, evoking gigantic forces of ruin that once 
in motion no hand can stay—a nemesis from which 
they themselves will not be able to escape, but from 
whose purifying fires the spiritual hosts of the re- 
deemed will emerge unscathed, to organize ‘‘a new 
heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness’’ (2 Peter 3: IO-I3). 

The coming age is therefore to be, on the one hand, 
the Last Day of the old order of mingled good and 
evil, the Judgment Day in which the Chores, ‘‘the 
Judge who renders a strict decision,’ will cause a 
self-revelation and a spontaneous realignment of the 
moral and spiritual forces of Earth-life that will make 
impossible any further compromise between them; 
a Judgment Day that will begin with the destruction 
of the unrighteous institutions and conditions of 
Earth-life, and that must end in the ultimate defeat 
and elimination of all incorrigibly evil personalities 
as well—that will indeed bring about the complete 
countervailance of the devolution of which the 
Serpent is the example and symbol. It is to be on 
the other hand an earnest of the glorious Consumma- 
tion, when humanity shall resume its rightful place in 
the onward and upward march of creation—and this 
is the work of the Mighty One as the Christ, “the 
Anointed One,”’ the Millennial King, who will finally 
“deliver up the kingdom to God even the Father”’ 
with all his earth-born children—all whom Love’s 
self-sacrifice could win—brought back to loyal alle- 
giance to his throne and restored to their exalted 
station in his royal household, ‘heirs of God, even 
joint heirs with Jesus Christ our Elder Brother.”’ 


XVI 


CONCERNING ZION—A SIGN OF THE TIMES 


own people; and for Israel, as we have seen, 

both of the Messianic proclamations of the 
Voice of the Day of Jehovah are peculiarly and 
momentously significant—and so is the glowing 
prophecy that begins with the ninth verse of the 
third chapter of the book. For many generations, 
with regard to the central factor of their world- 
mission they have ‘‘ walked contrary unto’’ God; and 
accordingly—and of necessity for the accomplishment 
of his purposes—he has ‘‘walked contrary unto” 
them and dispersed them among the nations during 
the Seven Times of the covenant threatenings (Lev. 
26: 14 ff.); but now they are to ‘‘take refuge in the 
name of Jehovah” (III. 12), the name that is heralded 
in the third proclamation of the voice, the reverse of 
Min- Naiserach that identifies the ‘“‘ Nazarene’’ they 
have rejected with the Messiah for whom they have 
been longing—only now their Messiah has become the 
Christ of Spiritual Israel in whom there is neither 
Jew nor Gentile; and the narrow boundaries of the 
national hope that in the olden days saw visions of 
the Son of David ruling the world from the throne of 
his father in Jerusalem are merged in the broader 
horizon of a grander Zionism that rejoices in the all- 
embracing Kingdom of the Truth, which in the 
providence of God has come into human life through 
Israel. 


/ \HE message of Zephaniah was first of all to his 


290 


CONCERNING ZION 291 


The lesser Zionism is however by no means to be 
discounted. Properly interpreted, it becomes the 
type and token of the final restoration of Spiritual 
Israel; and it is self-evident that the peculiar mission 
of the Jews as a people is not yet ended. Their 
marvelous preservation in an unexampled exile while 
all the nations and tribes by whom they were anciently 
surrounded have lost their identity in the “melting 
pot’’ is presumptive evidence to that effect; and 
however dark their pictures of threatened visitations 
of divine wrath may be, the oracles of the prophets 
without exception—as noted by the Masoretic ppn'— 
close with visions of a final and glorious and literal 
restoration to the Land of Promise. With this hope 
agrees also the implications of our Lord’s prediction 
that Jerusalem should be trodden down of the gentiles 
until the times of the gentiles should be fulfilled 
(Luke 21: 24); and these implications are reechoed in 
the declaration of the Apostle Paul “that a hardening 
in part hath befallen Israel, until the fullness of the 
gentiles be come in’’ (Rom. I1: 25). 

The threatenings contained in the sanctions of the 
Mosaic Covenant (Lev. 26 and Deut. 30 ff.), which 
were only partially fulfilled in the Babylonian Cap- 
tivity, have been universally recognized as circum- 
stantial pictures of the present condition of Israel; 
and Moses, like the later prophets, concludes with a 
prediction of ultimate restoration in confirmation of 
the covenants with the patriarchs and in fulfilment of 
the definite promise to Abraham: “For all the land 
which thou seest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed 
forever’’ (Gen. 13: 15). This restoration is indeed 
conditioned upon obedience; but St. Paul gives us the 
comfortable assurance of Israel’s final reconciliation 


292 THE INTERPRETATION 


(Rom. 11:25, 26). The fulfilment of the threatenings 
being literal to the very jot and tittle, it follows that 
the fulfilment of the promises must be literal also. 
The Return after the Babylonian Captivity was a 
literal but incomplete and anticipative fulfilment of 
the predictions of the prophets, even as the Captivity 
itself was but the typical first period of the times of 
visitation that are not yet complete. This is clearly 
indicated in the ninth chapter of Daniel, and that this 
was indeed the thought of the Post-exilic Jews them- 
selves is evident from Tobit 14: 5-7. And how shall 
we interpret the Eleventh of Isaiah—whatever its 
expression, “the second time,’ may refer to—if it 
does not include the final restoration of Israel in 
the Golden Age of the Messiah? 

Against these declarations and implications, it is 
vain to urge the seeming incongruity of such pictures 
as that which is painted in the last chapters of Ezekiel; 
for with regard to all the prophecies that seem to 
involve the restoration of the ancient temple service 
with its obsolete sacrifices it is sufficient to point out 
that in passages of multiple application we may expect 
to find terms that are to be construed literally in one 
application and metaphorically in another. The 
sacrifices mentioned or implied in some of these 
prophecies apply in their literal sense to the Return 
from Babylon; and are to be interpreted in their 
application to the final Restoration, according to the 
analogy offered in Rom. 12: 1, Heb. 13: 15, and I. 
Peter 2: 5-9, as referring to the “royal priesthood ” 
who are ‘‘to offer up spiritual sacrifices.”” Among the 
Jews themselves there are not lacking authorities 
who agree with this interpretation. Fairbairn* quotes 


* Typology, Vol. III., p. 268 note. 


CONCERNING ZION 293 


as follows from Schoetgen’s Hor. Heb. et Tal., I1., 
p. 612, “In the times of the Messiah all sacrifices will 
cease, but the sacrifices of praise will not cease.” 
Edersheim* gives many citations, even from the 
Talmud, to the same effect. 

It must be remembered furthermore that these 
prophecies have their application to Spiritual Israel 
only in as much as Israel according to the flesh is a 
type of the Church of Christ. Their fulfilment as 
regards the antitype is therefore out of the question 
save as it is also foretokened by a fulfilment in the 
type. 

Jewry under the oppressive dominance of the 
gentile world-powers, which began with the Baby- 
lonian Captivity and is to continue to the end of the 
“Times of the Gentiles,’”’ is a type of Christendom in 
bondage for “a Time, Times and the Dividing of a 
Time” to Babylon the Great; and the restoration of 
Jerusalem the Earthly City of the Ancient People of 
God will therefore be a harbinger of the restoration of 
Spiritual Israel, the whole Church, to the liberty of 
the sons of God, and of the revelation of the New 
Jerusalem, the Spiritual City of God. 

But however dubious it may once have seemed to be, 
the application of the prophecies on which the Zionists 
base their hopes is now definitely settled by the 
unequivocal declaration of the New Book of Zeph- 
aniah; for it is in immediate connection with the 
Third Proclamation of the Voice of the Day of 
Jehovah, which heralds the coming of the Conquering 
Christ, that it is written, ‘‘From beyond the rivers of 
Ethiopia my suppliants, even the daughter of my 
dispersed, shall they bring as mine offering’’ (III. 10); 


* Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Appendix XIV. 


294 THE INTERPRETATION 


and ‘‘at that time will I bring you in and at that time 
will I gather you... when I bring back your 
captivity before your eyes’’ (III. 20). Furthermore 
Jerusalem has already been delivered from the 
Moslem, and is held as a mandatory by the great 
Christian Commonwealth of Britain, with the avowed 
purpose of inviting the return of the homeless and 
wandering Jew. “Sing therefore, O daughter of 
Zion, shout O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all thy 
heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. Jehovah hath 
taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine 
enemy ’’ (III. 14, 15). 

As in the return after the Babylonian Captivity, 
most of the rich and prosperous will doubtless feel 
bound by their commercial and financial interests to 
the lands of their adoption; but from the lands still 
cursed by memories of the ghetto and from the land 
of the pale and the pogrom, the ‘‘afflicted and poor’”’ 
are already looking hopefully toward the Promised 
Land, and Zionists all over the world are eagerly 
concerting practical measures to bring to a glad 
realization the long-deferred but never forgotten 
hope of their fathers. Even from the favored land 
“beyond the rivers of Ethiopia’’ that has become the 
peaceful refuge—almost the Second Canaan—of at 
least a quarter of the people of the Ancient Covenant 
there will be sent without any doubt, as an offering 
of the incense (III. 1ny) of devotion, an abundant 
(II. .nv) company of the true worshippers (I. ny) of 
Jehovah (III. 10). 

Just what the peculiar mission of the Jew is to be 
is not set forth in the pages of Zephaniah or of any 
other prophet; but ‘‘At that time,” saith Jehovah, 
“T will make you a name and a praise among all the 


CONCERNING ZION 295 


peoples of the Earth”’ (III. 20). There is no sugges- 
tion, however, of a literal Messianic Jewish world- 
empire—and where is the Jew who would wish for it 
now? Indeed the confutation of this notion is more 
than suggested; “for then,’’ saith Jehovah, “I will 
take away out of the midst of thee them that exult in 
thy majesty, and thou shalt no more be haughty in 
my holy mountain. But I will leave in the midst of 
thee an afflicted and poor people and they shall 
take refuge in the name of Jehovah” (III. 
II-I2). 

It needs no prophetic vision, however, to see clearly 
that Providence has disciplined the children of 
Abraham according to the flesh with some special 
purpose in view, and that it must be in accordance 
with this purpose that he has scattered them broad- 
cast over all the world, but more especially throughout 
Christendom. Jewry and Christendom are indeed as 
geographical terms practically synonymous—so fully 
so that there is hardly a hamlet inhabited by Christians 
that has not also its quota of Jews. The sons of 
Jacob are primarily oriental, and their condition has 
been on the whole far more tolerable in Eastern 
heathendom and under the Crescent than in the West 
and under the Cross—for since Constantine and 
Justinian the Cross has been the emblem of the 
intolerant Imperialism that has usurped dominion 
over most of the Church and sought through the 
Church to conquer and exploit the whole realm of 
human life without a rival, and that has accordingly 
persecuted the Jews as it has the martyrs of Jesus— 
and yet there are little more than half a million of 
them in Moslem lands and not more than half that 
number in the heathen world; so that the vast bulk 


296 THE INTERPRETATION 


of the eleven or twelve millions of Jews are to be 
found in Europe and America.* 

This providential relationship between Christendom 
and Jewry, with its deep prophetic import, is reflected 
in the relationship between the mystic symbols of 
Christianity and Judaism; for the only purely Chris- 
tian representation of the Cross, the monogram of 
Jesus Christ and the Ichthus token of the early Church, 
Iota-Chi, *, the equivalent of the Hebrew Nidan, 
the Sign of the Seed of the Woman, presents exactly 
the structural lines that form the heraldic “‘ordinary,”’ 
the true armorial bearing, the distinctive charge, of 
the Magen-David, ‘‘the Shield of David,” *, which 
is the symbol of Judaism, a symbol that, like the 
Ichthus token of the Church of Christ, originated in 
the early centuries of the Christian Era, and that 
has now been formally adopted as the official emblem 
of the Zionists—and this is as it should be, for its 
Messianic promise was the glory of the House of 
David. Written together the two emblems become 
%t—a token of the final restoration of Israel and of 
the triumphant return of the Nazarene as the Lord’s 
Anointed, when at last “‘his own,” rejecting him no 
longer, shall join in the glad acclaim, ‘‘Hosanna to 
the Son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” 

Let us note in passing that here at last is absolved 
the promise that the Seal of the Living God would 
be found to suggest the characteristic and distinctive 
human relationships as well as the divine patronymic 
of him who is the Son of God and the Son of Man— 
the Seed of the Woman (the Son of Mary), and the 
Son of David. 


“Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed., Vol. XV., p. 410, 
Sec. 58. 


CONCERNING ZION 297 


Right royal, in the revised and truly Christian 
sense of the term, will be the world-function of the 
children of Abraham according to the flesh, when they 
are restored to the Promised Land and to the spirit- 
ual household of the Father of the Faithful; for it is 
written, ‘Behold, at that time ... I will make them 
a praise and a name, whose shame hath been in all 
the Earth’’ (Zeph. 3: 20). Oriental in heredity and 
occidental in training, and seated in the Holy Land, 
the historic center of humanity’s deepest and loftiest 
interests and the strategic meeting-place of the East 
and the West, the cross-roads of the three continents 
of the preponderant hemisphere, and at the same time 
in closest touch through the great body of its un- 
repatriated diaspora with the whole periphery of world- 
conquering Christian Civilization, preeminent indeed 
will be Israel’s opportunity for service to God and 
humanity, to Christ and his Church, in the new era 
that all the signs of the times and all the voices of 
Prophecy are heralding in an ever-swelling chorus of 
jubilant expectation. 

Jerusalem, which in its present squalor only too 
faithfully mirrors the spiritual life of today, will 
doubtless become in its restoration a not altogether 
unworthy symbol and harbinger of the new City of 
Peace that St. John saw in his vision coming down from 
God out of heaven (Rev. 21); and as the wandering 
Jew, an exile and a stranger everywhere present in 
Christendom, has been a perpetual monument and 
witness to the reality of the First Advent in his very 
rejection of it, so his return to the Land of Promise 
will be a visible token of the promised Return of the 
Savior, a proof of the potent Presence of “the King, 
eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God’’—to whom 
“‘be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.” 


298 THE INTERPRETATION 


Jesus himself, in the memorable *‘ Prophecy on the 
Mountain’’ reported by all the synoptists (Matt. 
24 ff.; Mark 13; Luke 21: 5-36)—though none of them 
heard it directly—pointed to the final judgment upon 
Jerusalem as one of.the principal landmarks in the | 
progress of time toward the Last Day and his promised 
Parousia. The conversation on this occasion origi- 
nated indeed in the Savior’s prediction of the utter 
destruction of Herod’s temple and his lament over 
Jerusalem, ‘‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the 
prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! 
How often would I have gathered thy children to- 
gether even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her 
wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is 
left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, ye shall 
not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he 
that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 23: 
37-39). His disciples therefore asked him, “Teacher, 
when shall these things be? and what shall be the 
sign when these things are about to be accomplished? ”’ 
St. Matthew adds also the question, ‘What shall be 
the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world?” 
Evidently to these patriotic Jews Jerusalem, and not 
Rome, was the “Eternal City ’’; and they were right, 
but they did not yet foresee the full measure of the 
Jewish rejection of their Messiah and the retribution 
it would entail. As we see now, however, the Roman 
Exile, like the Babylonian Captivity, is an application 
of the prophecies of the Day of Jehovah, an exempli- 
fication of the Presence of the Mighty One, and a 
type and token of the last great Day that is to destroy 
the apostasy of Spiritual Israel and mark the end of 
the age. The discussion of one theme inevitably led 
therefore to a consideration of the other and blended 
with it; but that Jesus discriminated between the two 


CONCERNING ZION 299 


shines out clearly even in the second-hand and largely 
uncomprehended summaries of the conversation given 
us by the evangelists. It is evidently in answer to 
their primary inquiry as to when the destruction of 
Jerusalem is to take place that he tells his disciples, 
“This generation shall not pass away till all these 
things be accomplished’”’ (Matt. 24: 34; Luke 21: 32. 
Cf. also Matt. 23: 36); while it is in reply to their 
question concerning the end of the world that he says 
further, ‘But of that day and hour knoweth no one, 
not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but 
inet athen only (i) (vlatt..\ 24:3) 265 Mark 1332), 
Reading the record now, we see that this visitation of 
wrath upon Jerusalem, eighteen centuries and a half 
long, as it has become, does indeed blend into the end 
of the age, and that its conclusion must therefore be 
an exceedingly significant sign of the times, and an 
immediate token of the Parousia. This truth appears 
most unmistakably in the account written by the 
exact and systematic hand of St. Luke; for according 
to this account Jesus tells us concerning the future of 
Jerusalem, ‘‘But when ye see Jerusalem compassed 
with armies then know that her desolation is at 
hand. ... And they shall fall by the sword, and 
shall be led captive into all the nations: and Jerusalem 
shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times 
of the Gentiles be fulfilled’? (Luke 21: 20-24). And 
then, immediately following this assumption of the 
final restoration of the city, he gives us the specific 
sign of the end itself, closing with the familiar picture 
of the theophany in the clouds of heaven and the 
assurance, ‘‘But when these things begin to come to 
pass, look up, and lift up your heads; because your re- 
demption draweth nigh”’ (Luke 21: 28). 

The capture of Jerusalem by General Sir Edmund 


300 THE INTERPRETATION 


Allenby was therefore an event of no mere passing 
interest; and it is notable that it was regarded by the 
Arabic speaking peoples of Palestine, even by the 
Moslems of that region, as ‘“God-inspired.’”?’ They 
saw in it and in him, in his methods and in his very 
name, the fulfilment of a prophecy, current among 
them for many generations, that he who should re- 
store Jerusalem to its ancient glory would enter the 
city on foot—as Allenby did—and that his name would 
signify, ‘‘God inspires,’”’? which is in Arabic ’Allah- 
nabi.* Construed in Hebrew, however, this name 
becomes ’Alé-nabi, sams, ‘Against the Prophet”; 
and that the work of General Allenby was indeed 
ordained of God for the overthrow of the False 
Prophet of Islam, who through his Calif, the Sultan, 
was the last of the line of oppressors by whom Jeru- 
salem was to be trodden down, and that accordingly 
it heralds the end of the Times of the Gentiles and the 
beginning of the new era under the leadership of the 
true Israel of God is suggested by all the circum- 
stances of this unprecedented day, which correspond 
so circumstantially with the Scriptural prophecies 
that the consensus of the ages has applied to the time 
of the end; and it is confirmed by the fact that here 
converge all the time predictions marked by the mystic 
labels of the Seven Times, its half and its variations. 
For the Great War burst upon an astonished world in 
the 2520th yeart from the beginning of the dominance 
of Babylon, and the recovery of the Holy City took 
place at the end of Seven Times after its first subjection 
by Nebuchadnezzar; while the expedition of such 
blessed promise to the lovers of Zion set forth, in 
accordance with the beatitude that closes the Book of 
Daniel, in the 1335th year of the Hegeira. 


* See Literary Digest History of the Great War, Vol. X., p. 91. 
f See Part II., Chap. VI., first three footnotes. 


XVIT 


TO THE CHURCH—A SUMMONS 


EPHANIAH ben Cushi, the man of dark coun- 
oy, tenance, who for so many centuries has been 
the silent treasurer of the hidden purposes of 

God, has always been recognized as above all others 
the herald of the Day of Wrath. The burden of his 
prophecy to his contemporaries was contained in the 
Obverse of his Great Oracle, ‘“The Great Day of 
Jehovah is near, it is near and hasteneth greatly’’; 
and the burden of his apocalypse, the message hidden 
and preserved for the Last Day and only just re- 
covered, the warning appropriately and significantly 
found in the Reverse of the same Oracle, is even more 
insistent, for it announces that “‘the Day is at hand” 
— Havah Yom—and who will deny that the condi- 
tions in the midst of which this long reserved message 
is now at last made known are entirely worthy of the 
interpretation given them by the Voice of the Day? 
For it heralds the final PRESENCE of him who was 
first made known as the Mighty to Save and the 
Mighty Avenger, who afterwards came as the lowly 
Nazarene, bringing at such great cost to himself the 
life of God into the dying body of humanity, and 
who, having at last fully reanimated such as have 
already actually received him with the power of that 
endless life, is now coming again, according to his 
promise, accompanied by the first fruits of his Great 
Salvation, the resurrected hosts of the Church of the 
First-born, as the glorified Son of Man, the WORD 


301 


302 THE INTERPRETATION 


OF GOD, the Christ and the Judge inexorable, to 
gather into the restored body of humanity—his own 
greater body, the Church—all who have potentially 
received him from the whole of the race of all ages, 
and to deliver that body from the gangrene of the 
essentially perverse, the incorrigibly evil. It is there- 
fore the Day of Jehovah in its final application that 
its Voice now heralds, the morning of the Last Great 
Day—and world conditions would suggest that it is 
indeed the hour before the dawn, for the fearful 
visitations from which we have not yet altogether 
emerged have corresponded as never did scenes on 
earth before and as men hope and pray that they 
never may again, with the prophet’s picture of the 
final Armageddon. 

The whole introductory section of the prophecy is 
devoted to this dark picture, but its specific announce- 
ment is found in the verse immediately preceding the 
Index of the Second Advent. This verse follows the 
prophet’s vision of Jerusalem’s supreme apostasy, 
her rejection of the Messiah, and foreshadows the 
retribution that has now been visited upon her, the 
weary waiting until the completion of the last age- 
long exile of the Times of the Gentiles; and then it 
pictures the final assize in which Jerusalem’s punish- 
ment is ended and the nations of all the Earth are 
brought to an accounting. Jehovah says here to his 
rebellious people: ‘Therefore wait ye for me, until 
the day that I rise up to the prey ’’—or, as the Septua- 
gint renders it, “‘until the day that I rise up to testify” 
(that it is enough, that correction has been accom- 
plished)—“‘for my determination is to gather the 
nations that I may assemble the Kingdoms, to pour 
out upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce 


TO THE CHURCH 303 


anger; for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire 
of my zeal”’ (III. 8). 

The world has now taken stock of the Great War, its 
attendant horrors, its ruinous cost in blood and 
treasure, and its utter futility as an arbitrament of 
the questions at issue among the snarling nations of 
the earth; and more in terror than in hope the peoples 
have made a slogan of the words of the chief spokes- 
man of Democracy, ‘‘It must not be again.’”’ Lower- 
ing and insistent and gigantic and growing, like a pall 
over the oncoming future, looms the black shadow of 
the conviction that if indeed it should be again, its 
wholesale and unspeakable horrors and its irre- 
trievable ruin upon ruin would be heaped up far 
beyond comparison with even the so-called Great 
War’s unprecedented holocausts—and in the back- 
ground of the picture leer the sinister figures of Red 
Russia and a restless Islam. The omens would in 
truth suggest the Day of Wrath even as Thomas of 
Celano conceived it—the Day of Doom—and verily 
the only hope for humanity would seem to be in the 
promise that the Mighty One will speedily intervene 
to ‘shorten the days’’* and cause evil to work out its 
devolution in such a way as not to involve the whole 
social fabric, nay the very life of the race, in its self- 
immolation—before it can complete its mastery, for 
instance, of the lethal gases that chemistry has already 
incontinently placed at its disposal, or before it can 
lay its hands upon the titanic resources of subatomic 
energy that will doubtless be ours tomorrow. 

The full significance of the Great War is not to be 
seen, however, in its magnitude, stupendous as it was, 
nor in its own direct results, vast and of tremendous 


* Matt. 24: 22; Mark 13: 20. 


304 THE INTERPRETATION 


import though they must be, nor yet alone in the dark 
forebodings it arouses and the dire moral needs they 
reveal, but rather in the mighty movement in the 
deeps of humanity of which, like tidal waves on the 
shore, its storm and stress were a demonstration; for 
it followed hard upon cataclysms even more momen- 
tous though far less spectacular, unprecedented 
revolutions in those realms of thought and action that 
are determinative of both material and spiritual 
values, revolutions that have not yet resulted in 
final realignments; and it is being followed by in- 
dustrial and social upheavals whose end is beyond 
conjecture. 

Of a truth, therefore, the world is now at the most 
critical period of its history. Now if ever must come 
the Mighty One who shall deliver humanity from the 
mad obsession that is making a last desperate effort 
to rush it over the precipice of destruction—whither, 
indeed, its swine must go. It is evident that our 
civilization, whose treasures, in process of accumula- 
tion for so many centuries in the keeping of the sons 
of Japheth, are at last to be shared with the peoples 
of all the earth, the civilization that is called and that 
ought to be Christian—and that is going to be made 
what it ought to be—has been put into the melting 
pot, the only way indeed to make it fit for its high 
destiny as the final and universal culture, to purge it 
of the worse than cumbering institutions, the corrod- 
ing customs and the deceptive ideals, the mass of 
counterfeit, that would seem almost to have become 
of its very nature. It must be acknowledged, how- 
ever, that from such a crucible it were not at all un- 
natural that there should come forth, instead of the 
Desire of the Nations, the veritable brazen Molech 


TO THE CHURCH 305 


of whose potential presence in our civilization there 
are sO many indications and against which, by the 
voice of Mahatma Ghandi, even the devotees of 
Juggernaut and Siva rightfully protest. The need is, 
and the promise of the Word is, that when the mixture 
reaches the nascent state, the PRESENCE of the 
divine Catalyst, the Glorified Son of Man, manifest 
in a new evangelism, the work of the Church, a 
Church that is to the veritable and multiplied re- 
incarnation of the WORD OF GOD, shall effect a 
transmutation of the base elements of Earth into the 
lovingkindness of the Kingdom of Heaven, whose 
pure gold, all-abounding, so the Vision of St. John 
assures us, shall even pave the streets of the city of 
the New Humanity, the New City of Peace coming 
down out of heaven from God. 

The Apocalyptic Chorus (III. 9) that prepares the 
way for the Second Advent proclamation of the Voice 
of the Day of Jehovah joins with the Voice and the 
Rubric of its Oracle to hail a reversal of the old order 
in Christendom for the purpose of a world-wide 
heralding, immediate and effective, of the glad tidings 
revealed in the Great Name; and the fact that this 
Great Name is at the same time the symbol of the 
Church assures us that the Glad Tidings is to be made 
known through the Church. The same Apocalyptic 
Chorus foretells the favorable auspices under which 
the Church is now to complete its Great Commission, 
the receptive attitude of the peoples—‘‘with one 
accord ’’—and the unimpeded intercommunication be- 
tween the nations—as if, in fact, they were all of one 
language and dwelt in one community again as in 
the picture of the days before the curse that is coter- 
minous with Babylon and her line—new world- 


306 THE INTERPRETATION 


conditions altogether favorable to the new evangelism. 
And behold how all things have been working to- 
gether for the fulfilment of these predictions. The 
progress of science, discovery and invention has 
enabled us to over-ride all the physical barriers that 
“interposed make enemies of nations’’; the intellectual 
and spiritual walls of partition are crumbling; and 
the culture of Christendom, purged of some of its 
faults and perversities by the Great War and cleansed 
from every other unrighteousness by whatever tribula- 
tions it may be necessary to visit upon it still, is 
indeed going to go forth from little Europe and its 
colonies to possess every corner of the Earth; and the 
Church, the living and informing soul within it, is 
beginning to realize that this is in truth its divine call 
to resume the long suspended execution of its Great 
Commission. 

For centuries the work of the Church was practically 
confined to Europe, her refuge in the wilderness for a 
thousand two hundred and sixty days (Rev. I2: 6, 
14). Save for the two witnesses, who were to prophesy 
for the same mystic period (Rev. 11: 3), Christianity 
had been altogether driven out of Asia and Africa by 
the seventh decade of seventh century of the Christian 
Era; and not only were the doors of opportunity 
tightly closed, but missionary zeal itself seemed to 
have burned out entirely; or if it flamed up here and 
there, it was clearly “‘strange fire’’ and well deserved 
the ill success that soon extinguished it. The Church 
was in fact busy forging the tools and gathering the 
resources that it was to use in the Great Day that was 
coming—when the fields should be white unto harvest. 

A hundred years ago, however—following the 
Napoleonic Wars—there dawned a new era of World 


TO THE CHURCH 307 


Missions; and since then, little by little, the Church 
has aroused to a fuller appreciation of her high calling, 
and at the same time the doors of opportunity have 
swung open of their own accord and she has entered 
one land after another, until at last there is hardly a 
people or a language that has not its own vernacular 
version of at least some portions of the Sacred Scrip- 
tures and its own native living epistles. And now, 
with this preliminary work accomplished, and the 
great opportunity, the crisis, at hand, behold, while 
we are still in the danger zone of that mighty leveler 
of obstructions, the Great War, the greatest in all his- 
tory—a war indeed whose most dramatic victory was 
won in the regions around Megiddo—all the divisions 
and brigades of the Church Militant are up in arms 
and making such plans and preparations as never 
would have been dreamed of even a decade ago, 
getting ready, in answer to the challenge of rampant 
anarchy in Christendom, to the invitation of uni- 
versal unrest in Heathendom, and to the threat of 
unwonted activity in Islam, to wage a second World 
War of even vaster import than the contest with 
carnal weapons just won for righteousness, a cam- 
paign for universal goodwill and brotherhood, to 
enthrone the Prince of Peace in the whole life of 
humanity, in its civic and international relations, in 
its industrial and commercial activities, in its social 
and religious ideals, and in the hearts of men every- 
where—for it is eternally true that the only firm 
foundation for social salvation is the salvation of the 
individual. 

The call is to an intensive campaign for personal 
and collective righteousness, to a heralding of the 
truth and an insistence upon its application to all the 


308 THE INTERPRETATION 


practicalities of life, that will differ from our previous 
desultory conflicts with ignorance and evil as the 
recent trench warfare, frontier-covering and ceaseless, 
differed from the battles of even Czsar or Napoleon. 
It is indeed the final World-War of the King of Kings 
and Lord of Lords to which the Church is summoned. 
The need in this unprecedented crisis is, however, not 
only for a Church that by voice and vote in ceaseless, 
forceful and sympathetic propaganda shall champion 
the ethical consideration of every issue, big and little, 
everywhere, but for a Church also that shall exalt 
Christ Jesus unfailingly and bear consistent testimony 
to the power of the Great Salvation to enable humanity 
to solve all its problems in the light of the Law of 
Love, and that, by persevering fervent and confident 
prayer, shall open the doors and windows of human 
thought and feeling and motive more and more 
effectually to the free access of the Spirit of Truth and 
to the over-ruling governance of Divine Providence. 
But it is only too evident that the Church itself, the 
Church as a whole and to a greater or less degree in 
every one of its branches, needs to be purified and 
transformed and endued with a fuller measure of 
spiritual life before it will be either worthy or able— 
or indeed sufficiently devoted—to carry out the great 
task that confronts it. This is therefore the supreme 
need of the hour, and this need is as vivid in the 
visions of prophecy as it is in the scenes or to the 
consciousness of today. In fact this need is the great 
lesson enforced and reinforced both in the first and the 
last of the apocalypses—it is the primary objective of 
the Great Day of Jehovah. 

Of the Day of Jehovah, as we have observed, there 
are many applications; and the Great Day is the seven- 


TO THE CHURCH 309 


fold campaign of judgments whose final and culminat- 
ing visitation at last brings correction. There have 
accordingly been many previous interventions of the 
Mighty One in behalf of the purity of his Church that, 
relatively to the times, can not be called ineffectual, 
but that were nevertheless only partial and prepara- 
tory. The Reformation—and with regard to its 
grosser manifestations the Counter-Reformation as 
well—did indeed erase much of the stain of Resh from 
the escutcheons of some parts of Christendom; but 
how incomplete and how superficial in many respects 
was the change wrought even by that mightiest move- 
ment of the Christian Centuries is only too self- 
evident. In many places the house of the Church 
was swept and garnished only to be left empty, a 
prey to the seven-fold evils that have so generally 
demoralized Protestantism and that finally made the 
resurrection of the Blond Beast possible even in the 
land of Luther. Self-interest, which is the cardinal 
principle of the World—or the exaltation of the 
Church as an end in itself, which is the dominant 
motive of Romanism—came back in the form of the 
narrow Sectarianism that has opened the door to 
Bigotry, Pride, Contention, Covetousness, Formalism, 
Heresy and Infidelity; and the last state of these 
Churches would be worse than the first, were it not 
for the great revivals that have swept through them 
and cleansed some of them and made them again such 
temples as in the condescension of his long-suffering 
could be accepted by the Spirit of Christ. 

Happily this great aberration that has afflicted 
Protestantism so long seems now to have run its 
course and to be giving place to a genuine desire for 
the return of Christian unity; and, whatever may be 


310 THE INTERPRETATION 


the final verdict of time with regard to the Inter- 
church World Movement, there can be no doubt that 
its fallen petals, far from marking a disheartening 
failure, give no uncertain promise of the full fruition 
in due season of that significant desire. Indeed the 
unity of the Church just in proportion as it is purged 
of the arrogant and self-seeking spirit of the World, the 
spirit of ROME, and reinspired with the humble all- 
serving Spirit of the WorD oF GoD, is already hope- 
fully exemplified on all the Evangelical mission 
fields, and must go on toward perfection as the 
Churches become more and more fully imbued with 
the missionary zeal that is the unfailing token of 
spiritual life, must go on developing until the World 
shall see everywhere the good and pleasant and con- 
vincing revelation of a veritable Untias Fratrum; a 
unity, not according to the Medieval and peculiarly 
Roman ideal of conformity in one grand organization, * 
but according to the truly Christian ideal of ‘‘the 
unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace’’; a unity 
that will be the spontaneous expression of the full 
and free allegiance of the individual soul to its rightful 
Sovereign enthroned, neither at Rome nor at Jeru- 
salem, but in the heart; a unity that will be the out- 
ward evidence of an inward grace, a token of the 
Presence of the Master leading his Church—and 
through his Church leading the World, in all its 
relations, personal, political, international, economic, 
the whole social order—more and more fully into 
loyal and joyous obedience to the Law of Love. 

The time has not yet arrived, however, for self- 
congratulation, either on the part of the Church as a 
whole or on the part of any of its constituent organiza- 


* Cf. James Brice, The Holy Roman Empire, Chap. VII. 


TO THE CHURCH aan 


tions. Conditions glaringly patent call for humility, 
for heart-searching and repentance, on the part of each 
—lest its candle-stick be moved out of its place—for 
it is evident that everywhere Reformation and 
Counter-Reformation, the revivals of the past and the 
forward movements of recent decades, excellent as . 
their results have been in many ways, must now be 
complemented by the fires of the dross-consuming 
zeal by which the promised Presence of the ‘‘Christ”’ 
will manifest itself in his Church—or else they will 
be supplemented by the fearful conflagration of the 
zeal of the “Judge Inexorable”’ in the Great Day of 
his Coming (III. 8). 

All these minor crises of our progress out of the 
worse than barbarism of the Dark Ages, all these 
lesser exemplifications of the Day of Jehovah, have 
been but the growing pains of Christendom—which 
is the Church in the larger application of the outer 
meaning of the term. The crisis that now confronts 
us is climacteric. In the evolution of the race of the 
Second Adam, it ushers in the New Man in Christ 
Jesus—and in the devolution of the fallen race of the 
First Adam, it brings the full development of its 
heredity from the Father of Lies. It is the Day of 
Jehovah heralded in the final proclamation of the 
Voice, the Last Day, the Day that is to reveal and 
segregate all moral and spiritual entities according to 
their kind, to the right or to the left of the Judge, and 
leave them, each untrammeled by the restraints of 
its opposite, to the free out-working of their own 
inherent tendencies—those on the right to further 
development, to life in ever richer abundance, and 
those on the left to inevitable self-destruction. And 
first of all, the Church must be freed at any cost from | 


312 THE INTERPRETATION 


the deadly incubus of the World—whose consummate 
incarnation is ROME. : 

Certain it is, therefore, that from the Church in 
all its members, Greek, Latin, Evangelical and 
Oriental, all the errors and evils of which imperial, 
syncratistic and materialistic Rome is the example and 
symbol, are to be resistlessly and completely done 
away with in the Day that is even now at hand. 
They will go even if the outward form of the Church— 
be it an infected right hand or an evil eye—should 
have to go with them; for the mouth of the Lord hath 
spoken it. The words addressed to Israel apply also 
to the Christian Church—and how clearly they 
indicate its cleansing from the spirit of Rome! They 
sound indeed as if their final application had been in 
the foreground of the mind of the Spirit: “In that day 
shalt thou not be put to shame for all thy doings 
wherein thou hast transgressed against me; for then 
I will take away out of the midst of thee them that 
exult in thy majesty, and thou shalt no more be 
haughty in my holy mountain. But I will leave in 
the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and 
they shall take refuge in the name of Jehovah” 
Chit nr 32). 

The deliverance of Jerusalem from the oppressions 
of the Gentile World-powers that began with the 
Babylonian Captivity is therefore the sign and seal 
of the deliverance of the whole Earth from the 
rapacity of all such perversions of government, and 
of the cleansing of the Church, all Christendom, the 
world at large, its whole social order, as well as its 
religious and civic life, from its obsession by the Spirit 
of which they are the historic exponents, the Spirit 
that hides the heart of a wild beast behind the golden 


TO THE CHURCH 313 


mask of royal splendor, and cloaks the soul of a dragon 
under the guise of a lamb, the Spirit of which above all 
Babylon, the Seat of Nimrod and of Nebuchadnezzar, 
was the ancient proverbial exemplification, and of 
which the incarnation final and consummate is to be 
seen in the Greater Babylon, so long the mighty 
mistress of the world, the so-called Eternal City, 
in whose magic name so many Cesars, Czars and 
Kaisers have beguiled, exploited and devoured the 
peoples of the Earth—whose Ponittfex still sits supreme 
above so many elders of the Church. 

Fearful indeed have been the hydra-heads of this 
elusive avatar of evil; but the truth that the Church 
never entirely ceased to preach and to exemplify even 
in the darkest days of her declension has continually 
smitten them, and the very “process of the suns” 
has been against them. Many of them have been 
hewn off already; and though sometimes a three-fold 
horror such as Jesuitism has sprung up in place of 
the one that was slain, the hot indignation of God 
and man has made sure that some of them at least 
shall never menace the life of Earth again. The 
coils of the spent monster have in fact relaxed their 
stranglehold on the thought of Christendom, and the 
central and vital head itself can not much longer escape 
its destined grinding destruction under the heel of the 
Seed of the Woman. To paraphrase the immortal 
words of Lincoln, neither in theory nor in practice can 
either the Church or the world at large long continue 
half slave and half free—and behold how prodigiously 
the world’s scrap-heap of crowns and mitres and 
shackles of all kinds has been piled up during the past 
nine years! 

The day is at hand when no institution of any sort 


314 THE INTERPRETATION 


will be tolerated in which there are any lingerings of 
the old leaven of unrighteousness. Every such organ- 
ization, be it a business corporation or a labor union, a 
national government or a church, must be transformed 
by the renovation of its ideals and conformed to the 
spirit of the new era, the spirit of mutual and universal 
service, the spirit of loving-kindness that merges even 
into self-sacrifice, the spirit of Christ, or else there will 
be found no place for it in human society—it will go 
the way of the slaver, the opium joint and the licensed 
saloon. Least of all will there be room for any insti- 
tution that assumes to represent Jesus of Nazareth 
and yet fails to march in the van of this movement of 
transformation and does not continuously seek to be- 
come a more and more worthy exponent of the mind of 
the Master—it will speedily travel the road down 
which the state-church is fast disappearing, the road 
that the church-state has gone already. 

The churches, all of them, stand at the parting of 
the ways, and must choose without delay and without 
reservation between God and Mammon, between 
Christ and the World; for nothing but whole-souled 
devotion can accomplish the task now in hand: But 
woe unto the spurious devotion that makes great adoo 
about its tithes of the mint, the anise and the cum- 
min of mere amelioration (which lesser thing we ought 
to do, but without making it an excuse for leaving the 
greater undone), that doles out its miserably inade- 
quate ‘‘charities”’ to a pitiful few of the world’s multi- 
tudes of unfortunates, while it utterly neglects, or 
even bitterly opposes, those weightier matters of the 
law of righteousness, the measures of prevention, of 
thoroughgoing personal and world renovation, that 
will abolish the misfortunes themselves—the spurious 


TO THE CHURCH 315 


devotion that so often chokes out the true wheat 
when the fields are seemingly richest and most 
prosperous. 

It is well that the Church should be splendidly 
organized and highly honored, that vast multitudes 
should be enrolled in its membership, and that all the 
machinery of its propaganda should be unstintedly 
‘financed; it is well also that the Church should call 
upon all the sons of art and all the daughters of 
music to beautify its temples and enrich its worship; 
but these things are as nothing in themselves, they 
are worse than nothing when they are allowed to 
usurp the foreground of interest, and they become 
positively subversive, wooden horses filled with deadly 
enemies, when they are no longer sought as mere 
means to the true ends of religion and are perverted 
into coveted ends in themselves. It is this perversion 
that is represented by the Cross of Constantine, the 
sign under which the Roman emperor did indeed 
“conquer’”’ at the Milvian bridge—and later far more 
memorably at Nicaea—the sign that is the equivalent, 
therefore, of the eagles of Rome and the MARK oF 
THE BEAST. 

From this perversion the Church must now be 
purged thoroughly and at any cost. Its every organ- 
ization must appear before the judgment-seat of the 
Judge Inexorable. And if it is indeed but a “ Rem- 
nant’’ that the Judge will find worthy to receive the 
SEAL OF THE LIVING Gop, that saving Remnant-—so 
Zeph. 3: 11-20 and all the analogies—will neverthe- 
less be sufficient to rekindle the eagerly spreading 
flames of the Baptism of Fire and bring into action 
through the Communion of Saints the ever multiplying 
power of the Church of the First-born, the fuller and 


316 THE INTERPRETATION 


ever growing incarnation of the Word of God, who 
was first made flesh in the lowly and lonely Nazarene, 
Jesus the Christ the Son of God our Savior, and who is 
now to manifest his Presence in that mightier body 
of which the First-born is the Head and whose 
members are at last to include the whole of redeemed 
humanity. So will the Church Militant be endued 
with new life, inspired with deeper devotion and 
equipped for the crisal contest into which it is now to 
march forth, the World War of the King of Kings 
and Lord of Lords. 

The task that confronts the Church to-day is 
indeed such as only whole-souled devotion can accom- 
plish—whole-souled devotion to the cause of an all- 
competent Leader. We are face to face with the 
necessity of winning the world for Christ, of capturing 
its citadel and its dominant fortresses, Now, before 
the opportunities of this era of transition are lost in 
a new alignment of forces. 

Very evidently the primary objective of the coming 
campaign will be Christendom itself. It is of course 
an essential work that the missionary enterprises of 
the churches have wrought in the century past; in 
every land they have prepared the way, have provided 
surveys and laid emplacements, for the New Evan- 
gelism that is to follow; but now the full offensive 
begins, and its strategy must develop in objective 
after objective and drive upon drive. In no part of 
the battle-line can there be anything but a continuous 
and insistent offensive, but first of all we must rise 
in the might of the Spirit of Christ and make Christ- 
endom actually Christian forthwith; and then it will 
be ours to command its secular forces, all of them all 
the time, as they sweep irresistibly and inevitably, 


TO THE CHURCH 317 


like the floods of the rising tide, over all the earth— 
forces that hitherto, alas, have been so often allowed 
to move on ahead of us, undirected and hostile, to 
become the ever active and effective adversaries of 
our old Evangelism, instead of the staunch and 
invaluable allies they ought to have been! 

The christianization of Christendom involves many 
acutely momentous and exceedingly baffling problems; 
but we can safely leave whatever Gordian knots of 
perversity there may be among them to the sword 
of the Mighty One himself, to the providence of him 
who “watching over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps’’; 
and we can rest assured that, with the Wisdom of 
God and the Power of God as its living Head and its 
life-giving Spirit, the Church restored to the likeness 
of God and to the communion of the ancient worthies 
will be enabled to work out all its other problems in 
the light of Truth and in accordance with the Law 
of Love. Truly the one great need of the hour is the 
cleansing of the Church from all its obsessions by the 
powers of darkness, for then at last the gates of the 
morning will be lifted up and the King of Glory will 
come in; and then indeed the transformation of 
Christendom will begin forthwith, and the conquest 
of all the world will follow. 

Swift indeed will be the victories of our World 
Evangelism when all the institutions and agencies of 
Christendom are at last whole-heartedly loyal to the 
Savior, when the ranks of Science and Art and Litera- 
ture, of Industry, Statecraft and Social Leadership, 
yea, and of Religion itself, are no longer infested with 
traitors to the cause—and swift indeed must they be 
if they are to keep pace with the world-conquest of 
Western Civilization and prevent the catastrophe 


318 THE INTERPRETATION 


that would certainly follow if the culture it imparts 
to the teeming multitudes of the non-Christian world 
should lack the one thing needful, the religious faith 
that is the only guarantee of moral and spiritual integ- 
rity. Its contact with the decadent cults of Heathen- 
dom must not be allowed to result in the poisonous 
monoxide of hopeless Materialism through the re- 
agency of its secular truths alone. They must be 
made to add to the wealth of our common heritage by 
the transforming power of its spiritual truths as well— 
and that there is no time to lose, needs no demonstra- 
tion. 

Exactly opportune, therefore, is this summons to 
the churches. The Voice of the Day of Jehovah has 
broken its age-long silence in punctual obedience to 
the behest of the Spirit of Prophecy; and its final 
proclamation is echoed and reechoed by all the signs 
of the times; and in reinforcement of its message the 
Seven Thunders of the Oracle have uttered their 
voices and revealed their portents. 

How closely the coming of the King of Glory and the 
Judge of all the Earth will follow the proclamation 
that heralds him is suggested by the fact that all save 
two of the portents to which the Oracle points have 
already presented their tokens—and even these two 
have entered the penumbra of fulfilment. The Day 
is indeed at hand, for it has lapped up the blood of a 
multitude—and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse 
of St. John are still riding to and fro on the Earth. 
The Beast from the Bottomless Pit has risen and 
ravened—and been driven back to his prison; and 
the whole apocalypse writ little in the letter of the 
Word has now been read and interpreted, and its 
summons to the Church is before us. Furthermore 


TO THE CHURCH 319 


the pictures drawn in the text of the Prophecy have 
also begun to find their fulfilment in the events of the 
day. Zion has been delivered from the Abomination 
of Desolation, and from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, 
his suppliants are preparing to bring their offerings 
to the God of their fathers (III. 10); and at this very 
time in the lands of the pale and the pogrom inevitable 
retribution has already overtaken those that have 
afflicted the daughter of God’s dispersed (III. 19). 
The double curse pronounced at Babel, the false 
“‘Gate of Heaven,’’ has run its course, is lifted: the 
Confusion of Tongues has given place to a wireless 
world, and the superlative sense of nationalism and 
the race-consciousness in which the Dispersion makes 
its final manifestation, though they may have to 
work themselves out in some final paroxysm of wrath, 
can not long withstand the effects of the growing 
realization of the solidarity of humanity in blood and 
in destiny as well, in all its interests and relations, of 
which the League of Nations, the Washington Con- 
ference, and the many international conclaves, 
religious, economic, scientific, artistic and athletic, 
are convincing evidences (III. 9). 

Of Zephaniah’s tokens there are still to be awaited 
only the unveiling of the portents that he borrows from 
the Apocalypse of the Stars—those final portents 
mentioned by the prophets and by the Master him- 
self and more exactly defined, given a specifically 
literal interpretation and a definite location, in the 
last two of the Seven Prophecies of the Oracle of the 
Great Day of Jehovah—the summons to the World 
and the immediate harbinger of the Coming One 
that are to be writ large upon the scroll of Heaven 
where none can fail to see them. They are indeed 


320 THE INTERPRETATION 


already written there, as we have seen (Part IL., 
Chap. XI., 2d Portent), in lines that, though they are 
invisible to sense, are just as clear to reason as is the 
sun itself, and that only wait the touch of the finger 
of the Almighty to flash their message unmistakably 
upon the eyes of all. First the falling stars of the 
False Fishes are to bode the downfall of the Prince 
of Darkness, that Old Serpent the Devil, and the 
destruction of the World in which he has been so 
long incarnate, the World as it is, the World of sin 
and sorrow, the World organized for exploitation, the 
World that crucified the Lord himself and that has 
persecuted his Church and supplanted her in her own 
house for so many centuries, the World whose head is 
ROME. “And then shall appear the Sign of the 
Son of Manin Heaven.”’ The circle of the equinoxes, 
the Great Index of the Ages, will point to Nun em- 
blazoned among the stars to herald the Second Advent 
as it did the First, and to the stellar theophany of 
‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and 
great glory,” in token of the World that is to be, the 
World made new by the WORD OF GOD, the 
wholesome, glad and glorious World that shall rise 
from the ashes of the old, when Earth has been purified 
as by fire and restored to the fellowship of Heaven. 


Printed in United States of America. 





















YALL NaN at 9! Se a at i 
ts i Pl a y 
es A Vi, \ ay ai " 2 fh 
s)he Wi; vite ; se 
ie bi 
' t on 
f 
ay ‘ y ; e " ih ys 
r : i ’ ve 
é ai | 
: ,2 7A , 
ban § ; af 
J f} , f 
: my ¢ Ws ; 
ef j : . 3 i ea 
aN Secu 
; 
a ee a | 
‘ 
; Gives Hin 
[ 
pos 
f 
{ 





* 


Wy 
. 
+} f 





= 


A/ 


x 
* 





cy, found in ancient 


e 


N — 
N= 
> 


opt 


8 


BS1645 
The lost pr 


r Libra 


ee 


Sp 


Princeton Theological Seminary— 


| 


| 


| 


I 


| 


| 


| 


| 


| 


1 1012 00029 8341 


| 


| 


| 


| 


| 


| 


| 


| 





